My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 104 in my name and that of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. In so doing, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my noble friend Lord Dubs, who, in my absence, moved and spoke to amendments in my name. He did so with characteristic thoughtfulness, eloquence and rigour, and I am pleased to have this chance to record my gratitude. I am also pleased to have this chance to record my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, who was willing to move and speak to Amendment 104 on 10 July, had he not been defeated by time.
This amendment seeks to do something essentially very simple to the Bill that is before the Committee and the legislation it relates to. However, I hope that the Committee will bear with me as in some ways it requires a complicated explanation—I will do my best not to complicate it even more. Essentially, it seeks to repeal Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act and, in so doing, remove certain anomalies, which I will come to.
Section 59 extends the current inadmissibility process for certain asylum claims and other human rights claims from what was, initially, broadly nationals or those who came from the EEA states, one or two other European states and other countries that are deemed safe. The mechanism for this in Section 59 is a list of safe states—countries from which an asylum or human rights claim must be declared inadmissible unless exceptional circumstances apply. That list can be added to, and the list that was originally drafted in the clause was increased to include India and Georgia by regulations that were laid on 8 November 2023.
I could detain the Committee for quite a time explaining the state these countries were in in respect of human rights on that date. I will read, in short, from the United States’s 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Georgia—that is the source of the information and noble Lords can find it and read it for themselves. I will read only two of about seven lines:
My Lords, I support Amendment 104 and I am proud to follow my noble friend after the passionate and eloquent way he introduced it. He spoke passionately and deeply about the young man, Noah, and the experience that he had in Georgia. Before I speak further in support of this amendment, to which I have added my name, I wish to pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, who, as your Lordships know, died on 6 May this year. I had the privilege to work alongside him on immigration and asylum legislation in this House. He was always seeking to bring justice and fairness where there was none and to give a voice to the voiceless. His contributions will be greatly missed. It is clear to me, having listened to previous interventions on this Bill and from the media stigmatisation of migrants, that this vital work of bringing justice and fairness to the system must go on.
I support Amendment 104, which, as I said, has been put before your Lordships’ House so eloquently by my noble friend. I also welcome and support Amendment 203E. These amendments bring us back to addressing the primary reasons of those seeking asylum. It is vital that each case is processed solely on its merits and not on the presumption of the safety of the country from which the person has fled, despite the issue of exceptional circumstances to which my noble friend has already referred. I am pleased to say the noble Lord, Lord Browne, has put the case exhaustively and therefore there is very little for me to add.
I believe this amendment to be essential because Section 59, once fully commenced, will make far-reaching amendments to the general inadmissibility of asylum claims from EU nationals, introduced by the Nationalities and Borders Act 2022. This could result in violations of the UK’s international human rights obligations, and I am grateful for the briefings that I have received, particularly from the Refugee Council. Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act extends the current general inadmissibility of asylum claims from nationals of EU member states to cover human rights claims and to cover nationals of other countries deemed to be safe, despite concerns expressed about the safety of three of those states: India, Albania and Georgia.
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 203E, to which the noble Lord has just referred. I certainly do not seek to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Browne.
I appreciate that we are in very topical territory, and I confess that I found it quite difficult to know how to approach this Bill following the Statement on Monday, because there is a lot to come—and I know that the Minister will tell us that we will have the opportunity to debate it, but of course we do not have that much detail and we are being asked to consider a Bill written before that Statement. We will have opportunities to consider the Home Office’s proposals, and today’s debates will give the Minister a flavour—if he needs it, because I do not think that he will be surprised by very much that is said today—of what is to come by way of our responses.
I, too, am grateful to the various organisations that have briefed us on Section 59. They have clearly spelled out the distinction between asylum and human rights claims and, as they say, human rights claims in many cases have nothing to do with a country’s general safety, or perceived safety. They are about someone’s connections to this country and their dependency and family ties here—as I said, this is topical—and are made by people seeking lawfully to enter or remain with their UK-based family. Among other things, this means that there is no right of appeal, because claims are not refused, they are just not considered. Of course—and it is “of course” to me, as the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, said—a country may be safe generally, but not to particular groups or sections of the community. The Supreme Court has recognised that a serious risk of persecution can exist as a general feature of life that applies to a recognisable section of the community.
This amendment takes us back to the 2002 Act, which Section 59 amends. That Act allows for exceptional circumstances, and what they may include is a subject of my amendment, in what would be the proposed new Section 80A(5A), which would provide that they include where
I will address Amendment 203J. I declare my interest as a barrister practising in public law and in the immigration space.
As noble Lords will have noticed, Amendment 203J does not sit happily with the other amendments in this group. It is not directly about the inadmissibility of an asylum claim, but it is on a very important point. The refugee convention of 1951 says that, if an asylum seeker has entered the country illegally, he is not to be punished or penalised for doing so, provided he came directly from a territory where his life or freedom was threatened by persecution. Specifically, it says:
“The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened, in the sense of Article 1”—
the persecution provision in the convention—
“enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence”.
As Professor John Finnis, professor emeritus of law and legal philosophy at Oxford, and I pointed out in our paper published in 2021 by Policy Exchange entitled Immigration, Strasbourg, and Judicial Overreach, the drafting and proper meaning of Article 31(1) of the refugee convention were compellingly expanded by Lord Rodger of Earlsferry and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, dissenting in the case of the Crown v Asfaw 2008, UK House of Lords 31. In doing so, they demonstrated the error of the living instrument interpretation advanced by the majority in that case and by the Divisional Court in the case of the Crown v Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court, ex parte Adimi, 2001 Queen’s Bench 667. The erroneous but reigning interpretation in Adimi is predicated on the notion, plainly rejected by the draftsmen of Article 31 of the refugee convention, that refugees passing through safe country A en route to safe country B and/or C and/or D and/or E should have the option to choose to seek asylum in B, C, D or E.
My Lords, I support Amendment 203E tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and declare my interests as vice-president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and chair of human rights at Liberal International.
I want to mention briefly something that happened in Georgia this afternoon. Nika Katsia, who was imprisoned by Georgian Dream on trumped-up drug charges, has finally been freed after the regime, astonishingly, admitted in court to planting drugs on him at a protest. This is the third such case in recent weeks. Many thousands of others remain in prison. Over the last four months, leaders and senior activists have been told by the regime they had to go into the Parliament and kowtow to the new regime. They were immediately imprisoned; it became a contempt of Parliament and some have sentences of seven to 15 years. These are the high-profile people, but some of the hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets every night are finding that, like Nika Katsia, they are ending up in prison for absolutely no reason. Georgia is not a safe place; I support my noble friend’s amendment for this reason.
During the passage of the safety of Rwanda Act, we on these Benches repeatedly said that Rwanda was not safe, and that continues to this day. The Rwandan Government have again imprisoned Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, leader of the Development and Liberty for All Party. She has been nominated for the Sakharov prize and was the winner of the Liberal International prize for freedom last year. She has spent most of the last 20 years in prison, as have members of her party. Many have tried to escape and seek asylum elsewhere for their safety.
Rwanda was not safe then and it is not safe now, so I am really pleased to see that we are at least now discussing that. These amendments are important, and when we come on to another group later today, I will raise the issue of how appropriate it is to have a list in a Bill or a regulation when things can move as fast as they have happened in Georgia recently. That is worth exploring, but I will leave that until we get to that group.
My Lords, I emphatically support the excellent Amendment 203J, to insert a new clause after Clause 48, moved so ably by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth.
It is important at this juncture to put this into some context, because there is a fast-moving debate on our involvement with the 1951 refugee convention and our obligations therein, and the European Convention on Human Rights. The Minister knows that these issues have been debated recently by his noble friends, including the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, Jack Straw, the former Home Secretary, and even other esteemed Members of this House, such as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. However, we are not here necessarily to talk about the disapplication of or derogation from the ECHR, although I may press the Minister to update your Lordships’ House on progress made on the review of Article 8 of the convention, which has been a government undertaking for several months.
The fact of the matter is that we have a small boat crossings crisis, which is the kernel of the rationale of this amendment. Small boat crossings are costing us £5.6 million a day in hotel accommodation for asylum seekers—the equivalent of 73,000 visits to accident and emergency by British citizens and others every day. The National Audit Office tells us that by the end of this Parliament, this is likely to cost the country £15 billion. We have had 180,000 individual crossings since 2018, and this year alone, as of yesterday, 28,000 individual arrivals.
The point is that this is an existential emergency for the protection of our borders, so we need to look at different ways of approaching the situation. On that basis, the Minister should look very carefully at this amendment. It is not about withdrawing from the convention, but a very robust interpretation of our legal obligations under Section 31 of the convention. I will not try the patience of the House by repeating the specific wording of that convention, which is often being misinterpreted by some members of the judiciary and others, including, of course, some charity groups with a vested interest in this area.
My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 104 and 203J, and to join the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, in inviting the Minister to consider carefully the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I was a member of the court in the decision to which the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, referred. It provides a good example of the problem we face in looking at these amendments.
The problem with the courts is that individual cases come to us and you have to consider them one by one. But as legislators, we can take a broader view, cover the whole ground and intercept problems that, if not intercepted, would come back to the courts one by one to be dealt with. The Georgian case is a good example: if it came before the Supreme Court now, the protection the court offered in the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, referred, would be made available as well. To allow that person to be extradited to Georgia, in the light of such conduct, would be quite contrary to their human rights. For these reasons, there is a lot of force in those two amendments, on the ground that they intercept a problem that will recur and is best dealt with by legislation now.
The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, referred to a case in the Supreme Court. I have no recollection of that case, and he will correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe that I was party to the decision and therefore was not in the majority. However, if the minority had included Lord Rodger, that would carry great weight for me.
I confess that, for quite some time, I have felt that the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is making had a lot of force behind it. I would need to look again more carefully at the wording of the convention to determine what my final decision would be, but he said enough to justify the invitation from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, to the Government to look at it very carefully, because the advantages of giving effect to that reading are obvious. I do not think that it would damage our reputation, because it would depend on an interpretation of the wording of the convention—not defying or withdrawing from the convention but giving effect to it. That, I think, is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is making, and there is a lot of force behind it.
My Lords, I am also tempted to speak to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Murray, but I will restrict myself to that from the noble Lord, Lord Browne, which seeks to include a reference to Section 59 in the clause.
Most of the asylum seekers who want to end up in Britain come from countries which we may at first see as safe countries but which soon go into chaos, confusion and great difficulty. So, to define a “safe country” in the rather difficult world that we happen to inhabit at the moment is precarious, because we will never know how safe it is. For a country that we thought was safe, we may suddenly discover that there has been a coup, or that people want a different Government, or that there is a lot of organised theft—and that is not simply a question of corruption, because, for me, the concept of corruption, at the heart of it, is a bit illusory. Because of the vicissitudes that exist for the majority of the people who come to this country illegally, let us not assure ourselves that the countries that we think are safe now will be safe in the next two months. Things change pretty quickly.
If we are to repeal parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 in Clause 38 of this Bill, it is best to include the repeal of Section 59 and not stop at Section 58, because of the difficulty we find in defining what we thought was a safe country. To put it in legislation would be a very unwise decision. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, has been wise to invite us to go up to Section 59 and not to stop at Section 58, because we would cover this uncertainty that still exists.
I am also attracted to this idea because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has supported Amendment 104 —and with good reason. I do not want to repeat the arguments that were carefully crafted by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, but simply to say that, because I come from Uganda, I know that while we may think that the country is stable today, it may easily find itself in great difficulty tomorrow. As legislators, let us not assume that the countries where we want to send these people are safe, because we do not know how quickly that temperature may change, and we may find that we have legislated for something that we really should not have done. Let us not be prophets; let us be legislators.
My Lords, when responding to questions about immigration in general, the Minister frequently repeated the phrase that the United Kingdom will honour its international obligations, and I fully understand that. Following the raising of the issue of the 1951 convention, I asked the Government in a Written Question in July last year whether they were talking to our allies and friends with regard to reviewing the convention given the changing circumstances of the world since the day and hour it was drafted. I got a one-liner saying no. I repeated the question on 3 June. The Answer exceeded the one line, but I was told that it had been looked at as long ago as 2018 in the United Nations but that no action had been taken, so, in effect, no discussions were taking place with our allies with regard to the convention.
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“Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: torture or inhuman, cruel, or degrading treatment; arbitrary arrest or incarcerations; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary, along with investigations and prosecutions widely considered to be politically motivated; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media”.
The first three lines of the United States’s 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: India included the following:
“Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful and arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by the government or its agents; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by police and prison officials; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners or detainees; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy”.
I will stop there—that is enough. There are many other lines that come with that.
Despite this and other information from other sources, the then Government thought that these two countries were candidates for a list of safe states, and therefore places from which certain asylum or human rights claims would be declared inadmissible.
I believe that this amendment to repeal this is in harmony with the animating spirit of this legislation. Repealing Section 59 would terminate the proposition in it that you can declare states to be safe in this way, despite the evidence, and would remove certain anomalies that I will come to. It presently extends the inadmissibility process for asylum claims and other human rights claims. The distinction between human rights claims and claims to asylum is critical, but Section 59 conflates them. Unlike asylum claims, many human rights claims are founded not on an assessment of a country’s safety but on an individual’s connection with this country: family ties and relationships. As it stands, we risk imposing what amounts, in an anomalous fashion, to a blanket ban on consideration of human rights claims from a country because it is deemed safe, when that is irrelevant to the nature of the claim.
Section 59 deprives individuals of a right to appeal, as these claims, because they are disregarded from the outset, go unconsidered rather than refused, and therefore there is no right of appeal unless there are exceptional circumstances. But what might be considered exceptional circumstances are defined in the legislation in a non-exhaustive way, with narrow examples, such as derogations from human rights obligations under the ECHR or suspension from the EU by the country itself. They are simply inapplicable to states such as India, leaving us with legal uncertainty, over and above all the other problems with this process.
Noble Lords will know that exceptional circumstances have been narrowly interpreted by the Court of Appeal in the past as requiring compelling reasons to believe that there is a clear risk that the individual will be liable to persecution in the country of origin. This test is clearly incorrect for private and family life claims—again a result of the conflation of human rights and asylum claims.
Returning to the list of safe countries, I believe that this involves the other place and your Lordships’ House being asked to do something that they are plainly ill-equipped to do. The list of safe states in Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act may be altered by the Government and future Governments through affirmative regulations, but I for one would feel myself placed in an invidious situation if asked to vote on whether a member of a religious minority could be considered safe in parts of India; on whether a young Bohra girl is safe in India, given the very high incidence of FGM in that community; or on whether a gay man in Georgia can be considered as residing in a safe country. To reach an informed judgment in these cases would require an omniscience that I do not pretend to possess.
I am grateful to the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, which, in the case of Georgia, drew my attention to the case of Noah, a man who, mere months before Georgia was declared safe, was granted refugee status in the UK. After coming out as gay, he was physically attacked by his own family members, he was forced to stay in a hospital for people with mental illnesses, and he had an exorcism performed on him at his local church. His partner was attacked too, but the police in Georgia did not protect either of them—but the United Kingdom did, despite this legislation being in power at the time.
Considering this case and others like it, the lack of an obligation to keep the list of safe countries under constant review is troubling, over and above all the criticism that I have. The Committee needs no reminder of the tortuous logic-chopping that accompanied the decision to legislate as to the absolute and perpetual safety of the country of Rwanda. I worry that the absence of a reviewing mechanism for this list threatens to put us in a similarly invidious position.
Of course, Section 59 has not been fully commenced, but, given that the Home Office has granted asylum or human rights protections to hundreds of people from the countries on the list in recent years, even the shadow of the Section 59 provision is damaging. If commenced, these individuals would have no way to challenge a decision wrongfully to deport them. So either the Home Office has, in granting asylum or human rights claims, been acting out of a superfluity of compassion, or the suggestion that these countries are in all circumstances safe is wrong.
It is my belief that Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act is ill-conceived and that it ties the hands of the Home Secretary, who, under its provision, must declare asylum and human rights claims from these countries as an inadmissible, save where largely undefined exceptional circumstances are detected. If fully commenced, it risks involving us, going forward under a new Government, in multiple breaches of our obligations under international law. I urge the Committee to support Amendment 104. I beg to move.
There can be no general safety presumption if there is a risk of persecution to even one recognisable section of a community. Concerns have been raised by numerous organisations on protection issues in India, Albania and Georgia, including those faced by women and girls, victims of trafficking, and minorities such as certain religious groups and LGBTQ+ people. In relation to the latter, we must recall and recognise the Supreme Court judgment of 2010, HG (Iran) and HT (Cameroon) v the Home Secretary, particularly in relation to the lived experiences of such individuals seeking asylum.
Finally, there is a fundamental issue with legislating for so-called safe states. The list of safe states in Section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 may be altered by the Executive through affirmative regulations, but Members of this House have expressed concern time and time again, particularly throughout the passage of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, that we are institutionally ill-equipped to act decisively to determine the safety of a state.
We have also expressed in your Lordships’ House concerns that we have been repeatedly asked to rubber-stamp such decisions of the Government of the day. It is our contention that the safety of a state must be designated by a review on the basis of reliable and objective information from a range of sources and regularly updated and published. I urge the Government to consider and reflect widely on this sensible and notable amendment and to work with us and the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, to accept this amendment.
“the claimant is at substantial risk of significant personal harm, either as a member of a minority group or as an individual”.
The amendment would also omit Albania, Georgia and India from the list of countries that are automatically “safe” for everyone.
Noah has been mentioned—and, in fact, he was my example for Georgia, where there is a lack of effective state protection for LBGTQI+ people in the face of considerable violence. To add to what has been said, he said:
“No one can know you are gay. If you are gay, your two options are either hospital or exorcism”.
This man was attacked by his own family, forced to stay in a hospital for people with mental illnesses and subjected to exorcism.
The Home Office country note for India refers to gender-based violence, with women and girls in rural areas or from certain castes and tribes especially vulnerable. Institutional prejudices—violence against Muslims, Christians and certain castes and tribes—go unpunished. Indeed, the country note describes the active involvement of the police. In Albania, trafficking is rife. It is one of the top three nationalities—whether you regard that as the top three or the bottom three—of people referred to the national referral mechanism and recognised to be victims of trafficking. It is internationally recognised that domestic and international trafficking, including trafficking to the UK, is rife, and the families of victims themselves are threatened.
I have been involved with the case of a young man —he was young when he came; his application has not been determined yet—where the threat to his family has been a major factor in his response to what has affected his life. Sexual and domestic violence is widespread in Albania. Wherever we are going in legislative terms with this, we have to recognise the situation that noble Lords have already described.
This is plainly wrong and not what was intended by the state parties when they signed the refugee convention in 1951. It is time that we corrected the law in this regard. Amendment 203J, together with Amendment 203I in my name, which is to be debated in a later group, restores the proper meaning of “coming directly”. In doing so, it provides a solution to the nightmare of the dangerous channel crossings and uncontrolled entry. I suggest that the refugee convention purposefully distinguishes between those who enter directly from a country where they are in danger and those who do not. There is no immunity from immigration law for those not coming directly; this was entirely intentional.
This amendment aims to vindicate the distinction and seeks to bring an end to the practice of widening the refugee convention beyond the terms that the United Kingdom and the other states agreed. Let us look at the terms of Amendment 203J. The Secretary of State would have a duty to refuse a claim for asylum if a person meets the conditions set out. The first condition, in proposed new subsection (2), is that they require leave to enter the United Kingdom and they have done so without such leave, whether illegally or otherwise. The second condition, in proposed new subsection (3), is that
“in entering or arriving as mentioned in subsection (2), the person did not come directly to the United Kingdom from a country in which the person’s life and liberty were threatened by reason of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.
Those words are taken from the convention. Proposed new subsection (4), for clarity, specifies:
“For the purposes of subsection (3) a person is not to be taken to have come directly to the United Kingdom from a country in which their life and liberty were threatened as mentioned in that subsection if, in coming from such a country, they passed through or stopped in another country outside the United Kingdom where their life and liberty were not so threatened”.
To make it absolutely crystal clear, proposed new subsection (5) says:
“For the removal of doubt but without limitation, for the purposes of subsection (3), a person has passed through or stopped in another country outside the United Kingdom if they depart in a boat, vessel or aircraft from France or any other European coastal state”.
If this provision were enforced, would you risk your life in the channel in a small boat if you knew that your asylum claim would be bound to be refused? You would not.
This amendment—to use the slogan so favoured by the Prime Minister—would smash the gangs by destroying the business model, and do so while we remain a member of the refugee convention. Unlike the timid tinkering around the edges we see in almost all of this rather performative Bill as presently proposed, this amendment proposes a real, beneficial solution and the Home Office should grab it with both hands.
My noble friend is right to talk about accretion and the reach of the concept that has developed since the 1970s: the living instrument doctrine, which has informed decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in this area. I accept that the Government are in a difficult position at the moment. We were, of course, party to the Dublin III convention— Regulation 604/2013—and we are now waiting for the European Union’s decision on how to implement the asylum and migration management regulation 2024, which will come into full effect in June 2026.
This is a question of fairness. If you go the right route and seek asylum, naturalisation as a British citizen or indefinite leave to remain, you are, as we know from the Home Secretary’s remarks earlier this week, subject to some pretty significant restrictions on who you can bring in, what your salary or pay should be and your access to public funds. That is perhaps as it should be, but if you arrive by small boat, you have no such restrictions. You are put up in a hotel, subject to limited security checks and are perhaps eventually to be reunited with family members, who will access NHS services, school services and local authority and housing association housing. There is an issue of disproportionality and unfairness between those two groups, and the important thing we need to remember is that my noble friend Lord Murray’s proposal addresses this issue in a way that will not cause—how can I put it?—legal chaos. Most importantly, it will act as a clear and demonstrable deterrent to the people traffickers and to those seeking to arrive by illegal and irregular means, by small boat across the channel. The Government have a good opportunity, as my noble friend says, to seize this issue with both hands.
I finish on the second issue: the UK/European Applicant Transfer Scheme, which was sealed by means of a treaty between the United Kingdom and France in May. Interestingly, the Home Secretary wrote to my committee, the European Affairs Committee, on 6 August to indicate that Section 20 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 was being disapplied, and that the Government had invoked Section 22(1) of CRaG to prevent proper scrutiny and oversight of the treaty, as per the legislation—in other words, 21 days of proper scrutiny. That may be an operational issue which was necessary at the time, but it goes to the inability of the other place and this House to properly scrutinise that one-in, one-out treaty and its efficacy. I would value the Minister’s comments on that. When will we have a chance to look properly at how that treaty and its effects are working, both in the interests of the UK and of our partners in France?
With that point in mind, the Minister has an opportunity to properly consider the amendment. The Government are in a pickle; they are flailing around for some gimmicks to convince the public that they have got a grip on small boat crossings, which they do not. This is a real opportunity for them to seize this issue and to reduce the pull factor of small boat crossings. On that basis, I strongly support the amendment, and hope the Minister at least responds in kind in an attempt to ameliorate what is a national emergency.