My Lords, in the House of Commons there is no party like the party of Marine Le Pen in the Assemblée Nationale, like Alternative für Deutschland or like Vox in Spain. The reason for that is that the House of Commons is a sensitive barometer of public opinion. MPs understand their constituents, and their constituents believe, rightly, that there is a problem of immigration. MPs of all parties know that there is a problem of immigration. That problem has been discussed endlessly today: the problem of perilous journeys across the channel, drownings, traffickers, the gangsters arranging those journeys, the cost of coping with large numbers in this country and the particular pressure on local communities.
It is worth reminding ourselves that that is why the House of Commons sent us this Bill. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said he would not be cowed by that, and I understand what he means, but it is a Bill that has come to this House from the elected House of Commons.
I do not know whether anybody else has said this, but the Prime Minister has been very involved in this Bill. I think that everyone across the House, whatever their party, would agree that he is a man who is serious, clever and decent and does detailed work, so we have to recognise that the Bill deserves very serious consideration
Of course the Bill needs to be scrutinised but, while the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said that he would want to make changes to it, I would have liked him to have gone a bit further and said he would not thwart the Bill or emasculate it. Some people in this House, such as the Lib Dems, would like to kill the Bill. The noble Lord does not, but it is important that the Bill is given a fair wind. It is important that the House approaches the Bill to make it more effective but not to destroy its purpose, but I suspect that that is some of the intention of what might occur in Committee and on Report.
The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who is not in his place at the moment, has expressed scepticism about the Bill, but he said that we should allow it to go through and see whether the Government can really make it work. That is the right attitude with which to approach the Bill. The point that I am making is simply that we must give it a fair wind.
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury. He is a fellow Lancastrian and we always talk common sense, so I think what he said is entirely sensible.
The issue of illegal immigration by small boats, which is central to our discussion today, is not just a UK problem; it is a problem in western Europe. Greece, Italy and Spain, among others, are struggling with it, and no one is finding it an easy problem to resolve.
However, one country has actually cracked it. I refer to Australia. What happened at the beginning of this century was that people came from Papua New Guinea in small boats—quite large boats in some cases—to the northern shores of Queensland. The then Liberal Government decided that the way to tackle that was to pass an amendment to existing migration legislation, not dissimilar from the measures that my noble friend is introducing today, and at the same time establish, radically and newly, an overseas processing centre on the island of Nauru near the Solomon Islands. The boats stopped coming, and that was the end of the matter.
Subsequently a Labor Government came in who, interestingly enough, opposed all this. They dismantled it, and a second wave of boats came through. The Labor Government then changed tack and began to implement the Liberal policies that they had previously opposed, but it was too late: there was a general election, the Liberal Government were returned on a policy of national sovereignty and they produced a more thoroughgoing version of the original policy. As a result, the Labor Government changed their tune, and that policy, which stopped the boats completely, has cross-party support.
On the basis of that, Australia has produced a methodical and rational system of immigration, with total cross-party support, looking at the number of people each year that it wants to allow into the country, including those who want to come in as students, those who want to come for family reasons and those who want to come in to work. It is debated annually—a whole day’s debate in Parliament, rather like the debate we are having at the moment—and then decisions are made and the policies implemented. The numbers can go up and down. The latest interest is that the new Labor Government have decided to increase the level of migration, but within a framework that has solid cross-party support.
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Horam always talks a lot of good sense, and I am pleased to be able to follow him. The House will be aware that I have a long-standing interest in absolute numbers and whether there is a number that this country can sustain, either permanently or by absorbing it on an annual basis. It is not so much where they come from or who they are; it is just that they are people who make demands on our space, whatever our space may be. It will come as no surprise to noble Lords that a Bill such as this, which in Clause 1 offers the primary objective of restricting illegal migration to this country, has my support and seems to offer a good line of approach.
I am very much aware that this leads to one being described, at best, as heartless. I reject that; I am as aware as any other Member of the House is of the dreadful circumstances in which many citizens of other countries live. Nevertheless, however difficult or painful, we have to set this whole issue in context. Sadly, the debate about levels of migration, which are inevitable as a result of our increased population, has become rather lopsided and dominated by two groups, both of which favour increasing the rate. The first can be described as the moral case, which is the underlying background to a lot of the speeches today; the other is the economic case of people to fill the jobs.
Let me quote from a recent magazine article:
“The left hates talking about immigration because it thinks any kind of controls, anywhere, are racist; the right has been running an economy, in part, dependent on endless reserves of imported labour, which it doesn’t like talking about. However, few things are more corrosive of public trust than pretending a problem isn’t there. Sooner or later the public notices”.
Where did that come from? It is Mr Andrew Marr in this week’s New Statesman. I do not often quote the New Statesman or Mr Andrew Marr with approval, but they have got this bang on the button.
My Lords, I am following four consecutive Conservative speakers and, with respect, I have more in common with the first of those four, the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, than with the subsequent three. The noble Baroness rightly quoted the Statement that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, repeated in this Chamber on 8 March. The Minister said then
“let us be honest: by some counts there are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let us be clear: they are coming here”.—[Official Report, 8/3/23; col. 846.]
But this was not honest, and the Minister clarified and corrected the record later in the proceedings.
Globally, at the end of 2022 there were 101 million forcibly displaced people around the world, the majority of whom are internally displaced within their own country —support for whom the UK has slashed its humanitarian assistance to by up to 60%. The global figure for those seeking asylum is 4.9 million; they are still not coming here. But the 1% who are seeking it come here against a narrative which, as my noble friend Lady Kramer so eloquently pointed out, states that they have values that are at odds with ours or that they will cannibalise our society. Now we are being asked to ban claims of asylum because of the method of their arrival rather than the merits of their claim.
The House of Commons Library has showed that the percentage of asylum applicants refused at initial decision reached its high point in 2004, at 88%. Since then, the refusal rate has been falling overall and was just 24% in 2022, its lowest point since 1990. Much of this debate has been about saying that we have an emergency crisis now, but we have the most successful level of justified asylum in 30 years. Some on the opposite Benches say that this is because of judicial activism but, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, said at the commencement of this debate, we actually have tighter restrictions now than ever.
My Lords, I think we can all agree that this is a complicated and contentious issue that generates strong views. But maybe we can start with a part of the Bill on which there might be some agreement—the Government’s indication that they want to consider opening more safe, legal routes for those in genuine need of asylum in this country. The Bill states that, once it is passed and the number of illegal migrants starts to fall, the Government intend to look at possible new safe routes. An annual cap will be agreed each year, in consultation with local authorities, to determine what capacity there is, which is vital. In the event of any humanitarian emergency, it is made quite clear that the cap can be amended. This is surely as it should be, providing as much safety and support for those having to flee from threats, violence and maltreatment as we have the capacity to manage.
The biggest obstacle to this is the growing number of illegal migrants who arrive here. Some are in lorries, but most are in boats these days. If caught trying to enter the country—many are not—they often claim to be under threat in their home country, when in fact they are economic migrants, intent on taking advantage of what this country can offer. They paid huge sums to people smugglers to get them here, travelling through safe countries on the way—why do they not seek the right to settle in them?—and jumping the queue of those in genuine need who have been waiting their turn to come here.
The number of illegal migrants has quadrupled in the last four years. Last year, around 45,000 illegal migrants arrived by boat. That is slightly more than the equivalent population of two Cirencesters, the town near where I live. If we do not control our borders better, how will we keep finding more and more space every year, equivalent to two Cirencesters, to build extra accommodation for that number of illegal migrants, which is increasing every year?
My Lords, in opening this debate the Minister said:
“Our broken asylum system is costing the country some £3 billion a year”.
I thought I would look up the list of Home Secretaries since 12 May 2010—Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Grant Shapps and Suella Braverman again. Which one of those does the Minister hold responsible for our self-described “broken asylum system”? Or is it all of them?
My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has covered the general horrors of this indefensible Bill. I am going to focus on some of the actual people, the individuals, who will be caught by it. They will be subjected to what can only be described as utterly unacceptable, inhumane and abusive treatment.
The Minister in his introduction said that 70% of the children arriving were aged over 16. So they would only spend two years or fewer warehoused here in the UK before it is time for “Happy birthday, your present is a deportation flight”. Of course, that means that 30% of cases will be facing more than two years in that situation of warehousing. For an eight year-old, 10 year- old or a 12 year-old, what would such a situation—the full knowledge of such a fate—do to their health and well-being? That that treatment breaks the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is only a statement of the obvious.
As the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Sugg, and others, highlighted, pregnant refugees are also trapped by this Bill—a small but important victory won by cross-party campaigns in 2016 to exclude them from immigration detention would be wiped out. Their babies will be born into indefinite detention. How long will they stay in that situation? How inhuman are the Government prepared to be?
There are people with mental health conditions and refugees who arrive here with conditions often induced by torture or war, or who develop them as a result of our hostile environment. I have a direct question for the Minister. Has he read the detailed forensic examinations of the impacts of the Bill from the Royal College of Psychiatrists? It quotes the Shaw review, which found that
My Lords, as other speakers said, we now live in an age of mass migration. As my noble friend Lord Hague often says, the population of Africa and the Middle East is expected to increase by about 1 billion people by the middle of this century. Of course this country has benefited over the centuries from immigration, but this is now an increasingly crowded island, with all that that means for our already hard-pressed housing and public services.
For many years, debate on this subject has often conflated economic migrants with genuine asylum seekers, which is why it is absolutely right that the Bill distinguishes legal from illegal migration. This very difficult issue is faced not only by this country, as many noble Lords know—you only have to look at Italy, Greece, France and Germany to see that—and our recent agreements with France and Algeria reflect an important recognition of that reality.
The Government recognise that the current asylum system is not working. As noble Lords heard, there is a backlog of 160,000 cases, more than £2 billion per year is being spent on accommodation, and, apparently, more than 80,000 people have illegally entered the UK since 2018, often having travelled through multiple safe countries to reach the UK, due to our so-called pull factor. So I welcome the Bill, as do a majority of our citizens. It is the Government’s genuine attempt to remedy our current broken system.
Today, we have heard plenty of outrage from various sections of this House but very little by way of alternative workable solutions to this admittedly very difficult problem. As an earlier speaker said, it is about deterrence —to cut off demand from the organised criminal gangs that are gaming and profiteering from our current system —and I agree with that. No doubt the Bill can be improved here, but it should not be mauled unrecognisably; in my view, that would not be understood or accepted by a majority of our citizens.
My Lords, I agree with little in the Bill, other than the broad premise that we must control the dangerous channel crossings and end the business model of the people smugglers. But the term “stop the boats” does not accurately reflect the Bill’s wide-ranging impact on asylum seekers and refugees, whichever mode of entry they take into the UK. This is a hugely complex issue, and it would be good to hear from the Home Office what strategy it is building to identify true need, rather than those wishing just to take advantage of the system, and what efforts are being made to establish safe and legal routes.
The current backlog in processing those already here and the cost to the taxpayer is clearly not acceptable, and it requires resource and efficiency on the part of the Home Office to clear. But if we seek to close our borders to those fleeing persecution without even allowing them a hearing, we are saying that we are outside the principles of international co-operation on which the global refugee system is based. We are in danger of criminalising, incarcerating and forcing statelessness, homelessness and destitution on genuine asylum seekers, many of whom are already traumatised on arrival.
There are 34 million refugees and asylum seekers in the world today, with millions more internally displaced people, and the vast majority are being hosted by countries that border the conflict areas. I have seen the Rohingya refugee camps at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. I have seen the vast refugee container camps in Gaziantep, on the Turkish/Syrian border, and the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan—a country that has already hosted Palestinian refugees for many decades. International co-operation is key to solving one of the biggest issues that the world faces: the mass movement of people due to conflict but also because of climate change. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees categorically stated that, if the Illegal Migration Bill is enacted in its current form, it would break the UK’s obligations under the refugee convention and significantly undermine the international refugee protection system, which needs support from all members.
My Lords, the more I listen to the debate—and particularly to my noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew—the more strongly I am convinced that the Bill is morally questionable, legally doubtful and totally unworkable.
Setting to one side these wider challenges with the Bill, I will focus attention on the impact it would have on minors, whether accompanied or not. As we have heard, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, the Bill proposes that these children, if not immediately deported, may be accommodated by the Home Office outside the established care system. On reaching the age of 18, they will be deported to a third country, with which they most likely have no existing ties, and will face a lifetime ban from entering Britain. Accompanied children who are not given the right to remain will also be barred from the UK for life.
Despite this disproportionate punishment for the children, I do not believe that it would even act as a deterrent, even though the Minister said that the purpose of the Bill is supposed to be as a deterrent. People desperate enough to take to the boats will not be put off by a punishment that would be enacted many years into the future. To quote the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium:
“The Bill also undoes a decade’s worth of progress made under the Conservative government, reversing the ending of child detention and protections for child victims of trafficking”.
The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, complained that no one is providing solutions, but neither is the Bill a solution. It will not solve the migration crisis; it will just add to the massive backlog of cases waiting to be processed. I agree with my noble friend Lord Kerr of Kinlochard that the solution can be found in centres in France.
As we all know, there is a growing illegal migration crisis. We all know that something needs to be done about it, but to attempt a solution that penalises children is misguided in the extreme. This is not how a civilised society treats the most vulnerable.
7:45 pm
20 of 77 shown
Illegal Migration Bill · Order Paper · Order Paper
I will not pretend that there are not big legal and geographical differences between Australia and this country—obviously that is so—but none the less it is important to look not just parochially at what we do but across the world at what is being done. It seems to me that they have done something very wise that we could well implement. I have talked to them at some length over the past year about how they did it. They stress to me that it was essential, first, that they denied to illegal migrants the possibility of being an asylum seeker and, secondly, that they could then transfer them to the overseas processing centre near the Solomon Islands at great speed. That, in essence, is what we are trying to do here: to turn the situation around very rapidly within the framework of British laws, which are different from Australian laws.
Those who oppose the Government’s policy tend to argue that we need new pathways for legal immigration, and I entirely agree. What we have at the moment is rather unsatisfactory; it is too specific to particular countries and too narrow, and we need to expand it and have a more rational approach. However, the truth is that we need to do that while having policies to deter. We need both. We need—to use a Lancastrian term—a belt-and-braces approach to this issue, otherwise we will not succeed.
I made this point, incidentally, when we had the debate on 9 December initiated by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury—good for him, because we need debates on this topic of immigration. He argued that it was right to have more legal pathways, because if we had a new, low-cost way of getting here, it would demolish the model of the traffickers, who would no longer be in business. Sadly that is not the case, as my noble friend Lord Howard pointed out earlier. If we have a new way of coming here, the people who do not get on to that route will find a private method, either because they cannot or do not want to get on to the new route or because they find it more congenial to come via private methods. Whatever the reason, we will not kill off the traffickers’ trade if we simply offer more legal routes. We have to have a deterrent as well.
There is also a bigger picture that we ought to mention, which sometimes the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, rightly mentions: this is a small number; the big number is the 700,000 or so people who are coming across legally, and we have to have a look at them. I am sure my noble friend Lord Hodgson will elucidate on this in his remarks. We need to look at that bigger picture.
This is a small beginning but, if we can get it right and get public trust back, then we can also tackle the bigger problem.
Both arguments have merit, of course, but what is lacking is any counterview expressed on behalf of the 67.3 million people already settled here, 18% of whom come from minority ethnic groups. Their concerns include economic worries, of course, but also a wide range of what I call quality-of-life factors: access to open space; damage to our ecology and our environment; an ability to achieve our climate change goals; our future food and water security; increased pressure on education, health and social services; and the impact on social cohesion generally. In February this year, I commissioned some polling on these points. If any Member of your Lordships’ House would like to see the polling, I will happily send it to them. The polling revealed that across all ages, all social grades, all regions of the United Kingdom and all voting preferences, about 60% were concerned about future population growth, 51% thought that there should be a cap on the level of net migration, and over 60% were concerned that the Government had no plan in place to consider this.
Since the Blair Government first allowed—perhaps encouraged—large-scale migration, the population of the UK has gone up by 8 million people, equivalent to three cities the size of Manchester. As year has succeeded to year, Governments—including my own—have explained away the successively higher figures as a series of one-off events, but these one-off events have kept on coming and the British people have been presented with a series of faits accomplis. If we as a Parliament do not find ways to address these concerns, wilder and less attractive spirits will inevitably begin to make the running.
In addition to the general direction of travel, the Bill begins to address the problem in two specific ways. First, in Clause 51 it institutes, for the first time, a total cap on numbers—a cap which will be drawn up after consultation with local authorities and debated in Parliament. In this connection, I pay a very sincere tribute to Stephen Kinnock, the opposition spokesman in Committee in the House of Commons, who gave the Labour Party’s support to the idea of a cap. Secondly, the Bill offers fairness. There will be no reward or advantage for an economic migrant who gets on a boat to cross the channel and so jump the queue. The British people as a whole are generous but they also place a good deal of reliance on fairness, and the Bill offers this.
The House can take one of two approaches. It can follow the line of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and deny the existence of any problem—or at least, deny its existence if only people like the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, would stop talking about it—and attempt to water down the Bill, so that it becomes ineffective, or it can recognise the deeply held views and concerns of our fellow citizens, and work to ensure that we respond to them.
If you are a young Iranian woman threatened with being poisoned in a college, or a young Sudanese woman fleeing threats of rape by the Wagner Group in Sudan, the Government are now banning you from asylum because there are no safe and legal routes from those two countries. The Government need to be clear that there are no safe and legal routes, but their obfuscation comes time and again. I think the Government find it hard to defend the lack of safe and legal routes; that is why they are obfuscating.
The Minister referred at the start of this debate—he declined to take an intervention from me—to the global scheme, as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, who I greatly respect, has. He said that the UK scheme for resettlement of vulnerable refugees is open to anyone from around the world. It is operated through the UNHCR, but what the Government do not say is that the Home Office has asked the UNHCR to have that scheme prioritised for Afghans only, therefore limiting it for others.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact did a review and I will quote from its report in March:
“As a result, the UKRS has almost completely ceased processing vulnerable refugees for resettlement to the UK, in effect closing a rare safe and legal route to seek protection in the UK for refugees who do not fall under a nationality-based scheme”.
Not only are we asked, for the first time in our nation’s history, to end the ability to claim asylum, we are reducing UK support in the very troubled areas people are seeking safety from. The Government do not believe that there are consequences for this, either.
I want to raise something not yet mentioned in the debate. In the 1990s, the UK opposed scoring in-country support for refugees as overseas development assistance, but this is allowed for under ODA rules. Ten years ago, this was a negligible amount. In 2021 it made up 9% of all UK ODA. ICAI estimates that now this is one-third, because the Government—unique among all developed nations—are scoring all domestic support under overseas development assistance. This means that we are now, for the first time, spending more overseas aid in the UK than on bilateral programmes addressing the root causes of the issues that we have been debating today. Because of the unlawful 0.5% cuts, this is now capped.
When the Government and the Minister say that the country is “generous and welcome”, I agree with them; it is that. However, if you seek asylum—a shelter in a storm, as Churchill described it—and if you are a child, you will be denied and you will be locked up before you are sent away and we will not even listen to your case.
On “generous”, let me tell the House that, when it came to the Ukraine scheme, the Government quite rightly trumpeted their thank you payments for families of £350, which has now increased, per family hosting Ukrainian refugees. This is scored 100% on overseas development assistance, which means that the Government do not tell the family that the thank you payment has been cut from children starving in the Horn of Africa, or from those who are fleeing conflict abroad.
I think the Government know that the public are not on their side. That is why they are not giving the full picture. This Bill has no moral basis; we should not be legislating for it, and we are causing more damage around the world, which will make the problem even greater.
Meanwhile, we read almost daily in our newspapers about the growing housing shortage. It is becoming a serious problem. Regarding our immigrant numbers in this context, there are those who are here legally and require housing—some 500,000 net over the past seven years—which is a major added pressure. There are also those many thousands who have no legal right to be here. They also have to be accommodated while their claims slowly work their way through the legal system, at huge extra cost and no benefit to the taxpayer. This is an example of how illegal immigration makes it more difficult for this country to make provision for the genuine legal asylum seekers whom we want to support.
We must put the people smugglers who encourage illegal migrancy out of business. Enforcing the new laws laid out in this Bill would permit speedy removal of all those illegal migrants they have brought here. As a result, fewer and fewer passengers would think that what the smugglers offered would be worth the huge amount of money they charged to bring them here. The dangerous risks attached to the journey would not be worth it, either.
The Prime Minister told a news conference back in March that, since a deal was agreed with the Albanian Government to take back Albanian illegal migrants—whom we now fly back promptly—the number of Albanians coming here illegally has fallen significantly. The change in the law to allow the prompt removal of illegal migrants in this country is central to how we go forward. They will either be flown straight back home if safe, or to Rwanda, which has been identified as a suitable alternative if they do not wish to return to their country of origin. Outstanding legal claims to live here in the UK will have to be taken up from where the claimants are resettled.
I would like to echo the concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord Sandhurst about the proposals concerning modern slavery. I ask my noble friend the Minister whether there is a possibility that those proposals can be reconsidered so that victims of modern slavery already in this country can safely report their condition without being sent home.
Finally, the general purpose of this Bill is to deter illegal migrants from setting out in the first place. No legal entry will be granted, except in special circumstances, to those who have already tried to enter illegally. We must deter them from trying and stop the smugglers making money out of misery. We need to change the law to do so. We cannot leave things as they are.
“immigration detention has a negative impact on detainees’ mental health”
and that
“the impact on mental health increases the longer detention continues”.
As many noble Lords have said, there are victims of modern slavery and trafficking. The Royal College report points out how frequently they, understandably, suffer from complex and difficult to treat PTSD. What will indefinite detention or removal to Rwanda do to them?
Picking up on that group, I am indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, for some information from an impeccable source—unpublished Home Office information—that shows that there is already an outrageous and persistent slavery-survivor protection gap. Of the 11,137 confirmed cases—I emphasise that figure—of trafficking and modern slavery survivors being referred for consideration for discretionary leave to remain in the six years and nine months between April 2016 and December 2022, only 738, or 7%, have been granted leave to remain. Far from refugees gaming the system, we have a system that is already a lottery, and the Bill takes away any chance for those people to establish a secure life for themselves.
On people who will particularly suffer under the Bill, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, mentioned LGBTQIA+ refugees. Rwanda is not safe for them, and neither are many of the other countries to which they might, theoretically, be shipped.
Some might say that the particularly vulnerable people I have listed are not the majority of refugees who reach our shores by non-orderly means. As the Minister said, the overwhelming majority of arrivals were adult males under the age of 40—that is a fact. They are men like the refugee now settled in Norway, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, referred. But what do the Benches opposite have against young men? Most of them were young men, once.
I finish with a couple of general points arising from the debate. First, as the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, said, asylum is a collective responsibility of all states, as the UNHCR and the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, among many others, pointed out. If other nations followed the Bill’s lead, there would be a breakdown in the international system of refuge. Secondly, again highlighting the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, this is not a small boats Bill; its provisions would affect all who seek refugee status in this country. It is a comprehensive anti-refugee Bill.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean—who is not in his place, unfortunately—quoted John Stuart Mill:
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing”.
That is a useful reflection on the amendment to this Motion—the Liberal Democrats’ bid, which has whole- hearted Green backing, to stop the Bill in its tracks now. We have heard all the usual reasons and excuses for why we should not: “We are only a House of review”, or “We are only an unelected House”. I will repeat a question that I put on Part 4 of what is now the police Act, which explicitly targets Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. It is a direct question to those planning to vote against, or abstain on, the amendment on stopping the Bill. Is there nothing you would stop? Where do you draw the line? Surely you have a line.
We cannot just throw up our hands and opt out of a system that we were front and centre in helping to shape because things have become difficult. Our international reputation must be preserved, because respect from, and collaboration with, the international community is paramount for the future success of Britain. We have always prided ourselves on our sense of fairness and capacity to protect those in need. I hope that we wish to leave this good reputation for future generations: our belief in the moral imperative to be open in minds, hearts and actions.
The Children’s Commissioner, who has a statutory duty to protect the rights of children in England, including those who have arrived in the country fleeing from war and persecution, has stated that the Bill undermines other legislation, such as the Children Act 1989. I say to my noble friend the Minister: let us not forget that it was a Conservative-led Government under David Cameron who ended child detention and quadruple-locked it into legislation in the Immigration Act 2014. The safeguards and protections under that legislation are being removed by the Bill.
The oft-held belief that many claiming to be children are over the age of 18, and thus adults, is flawed, as last year alone 850 children were wrongly assessed as adults and sent to adult accommodation and detention centres, which put them directly in harm’s way. The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium says of the Bill that
“the proposals will leave children locked out of claiming refugee protection; detained; removed; if unaccompanied, accommodated by the Home Office outside the established care system; if a victim of trafficking or child of such a victim, unprotected; and denied their citizenship rights. Children will be left in limbo for years, unable to access any form of status or to rebuild their lives”—
and, I add, with the very real threat of being deported to Rwanda when they reach the age of 18. These most vulnerable young people are affected at a time in their lives when there are deep and lasting consequences. Similarly, the Modern Slavery Act 2015 enacted under another Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May, is also compromised by the Bill.
In addition, some of the language used in the other place while debating the Bill has been deeply unhelpful; in fact, I am dismayed by the narrative that the Home Office has adopted. Stigmatising and stereotyping people, wherever they come from and under whichever circumstances, will do little to advance our aim to manage this most difficult issue. We all wish to see prosperity and security for our country but, I hope, with our principles and values intact. We must be on the right side of doing the right thing. The disquiet and discomfort that so many of us feel, whether we can adequately articulate it or not, is indicated by how many of us are participating at Second Reading. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take note.