Immigration: Eurodac and SIS II

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made towards restoring the UK’s access to Eurodac and SIS II to provide access to the information needed to deal with immigration issues.

The Government are committed to enhancing reciprocal data exchange with the EU for border security and public safety purposes. Through the UK-EU reset, including commitments made at last year’s summit, we are making progress on biometric and criminal records data and continue to work closely with the commission to identify and pursue further practical opportunities, including on real-time alert sharing and asylum data. Eurodac and SIS raise different legal and operational issues, so we are taking a pragmatic and incremental approach, while prioritising border security and law enforcement.

I thank the Minister for that. Of course, as a member of the EU, the UK was entitled, through Eurodac, to share the fingerprint information from illegal migrants, which, with the Dublin convention, gave us the means of identifying and removing them from this country. I know from my own work on SIS II that, with it, we had a means of getting—the Minister has touched on this—real-time information on the movements of terrorists and serious criminals who might threaten us here. Without either of those provisions fully in place, we are at greater risk. I therefore press the Minister: at the forthcoming EU-UK summit on that agenda, can we press very strongly indeed to get the real-time information that is so vital to our security?

I am grateful to the noble Lord. As he mentioned, the loss of that information was one of the Brexit downsides—one that many of us warned about before we left the European Union, but we are where we are. The Government are trying to ensure that we get that access back as soon as possible, and we will commit to that at the forthcoming summit. At the EU summit in May 2025, we indicated our commitment to ensuring that we get that real-time data back as soon as possible. It is in all our interests to do so, but there are still some challenges ahead to making that happen.

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the benefits to this country of rejoining SIS II and Eurodac go much wider than simply immigration issues and that they cover the whole range of law enforcement co-operation, which is so vital to us and our EU partners? Will he also confirm that the benefits from our rejoining these two schemes would also accrue to the other European countries that are already members of them, because they too would benefit?

Absolutely. It is important that we try to get back into SIS as a matter of some urgency. Last year, there were 95 million alerts, 2 million of which related to persons of interest for law enforcement and immigration purposes. In 2025, there were 17.8 billion searches on SIS by EU member states. That is something that we need to get back into. We had access between 2015 and 2020; we lost it with Brexit and need to get back into that position as a matter of some urgency. There are some challenges, particularly in relation to Eurodac, because legislation by the European Union is required to make that change, but it is the Government’s intention to reset that as a matter of some urgency.

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am supported by the RAMP organisation. Given the increased significance of Eurodac in the EU’s new migration pact, does the Minister agree that having access to Eurodac would significantly improve the tools in the toolbox to deal with irregular migration? Does he further agree that, to address the Eurodac issue, we will need to be closer to the EU, not further away from it—as suggested by some parties—by leaving the ECHR and being ejected from the Council of Europe?

We are not going to leave the ECHR under this Government, and the noble Lord knows that. Other parties can speak for themselves. Indeed, other parties have spoken for themselves, in getting us into this difficult position in the first place. There is a question about Eurodac, of which I think the noble Lord will be aware, in that it requires EU legislation, because EU legislation currently prohibits the sharing of Eurodac data with third countries. That is a difficult thing that we have to overcome, but it is vital that we try to get back as much of that data as possible. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, it is in everybody’s interests to share data, because criminality and immigration abuse are transnational.

Should not every migrant arriving by illegal boat be asked who they paid, who told them about the service, and who was driving the boat? If they do not co-operate, should not the authorities look at their bank records and their phone records?

The noble Lord was not here last year when we passed the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act, which agreed to do a number of things that are improving the situation as a whole. So much has it improved the situation that we have deported 13% more foreign criminals than under his Government, and reduced by one-third the number of asylum decisions that take place from a peak of 56,000 in 2023 to 35% fewer in 2025. We have reduced the number of people claiming asylum—down by 12%—and we have reduced the initial wait time by 55%. We have done all that while facing the difficulties of not being in the European Union and not being able to share the data that we did when the noble Lord advocated leaving the European Union, without any thought for the loss of that data, and its impact on society and on our safety as a whole.

My Lords, to return to sensible questions about Eurodac rather than the festering sore that is Brexit—or “real Brexit” and leaving the ECHR—given everybody’s interest in multilateral co-operation around these global issues, is it not worth remembering that Norway, Liechtenstein and other non-EU countries are part of Eurodac? It is perfectly possible to come to a sensible agreement about this.

We are trying, and we will continue to try, through efforts both at last year’s EU summit and this year’s EU summit, to improve the position on both SIS II and Eurodac. There are some logistical legislative challenges, with Eurodac in particular, but it is the Government’s intention to secure, for the benefit of both the EU and the United Kingdom, as close a co-operation as possible on both those issues.

Will the Minister confirm that it has always been very strongly in the interests of the British police and other authorities to promote closer co-operation with our neighbours? I remember when I was a very junior Minister being told in Yorkshire that there was no organised crime in Britain which was not international. I also remember much earlier, in 1989, when I was director of research at Chatham House, being approached by the Metropolitan Police to ask whether we could run a seminar on how to build police co-operation with our European neighbours—after which the British police played an active role in the establishment of Europol. This is all very strongly in our national interest, and we ought to be pursuing it as closely as we can.

Absolutely. I can even recall a time when a UK citizen was head of Europol and worked in co-operation with our European partners to reduce transnational crime. When we had access to SIS II between 2015 and 2020, we had access to those police records; they were lost at Brexit. I am not going to revisit the Brexit debate. We all voted our different ways—but I know which way I voted, and which way has proved to be right in the long term. Ultimately, we will do what we can to get closer co-operation to achieve the objectives that the noble Lord has outlined.

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, SIS II is available to non-Schengen countries, so surely the discussion with the EU is not about Schengen or non-Schengen, or EU or non-EU; it is a system that benefits us all.

It is a system that benefits us all, and we want to see it back in place. I welcome the noble Baroness’s support for that objective. But the Government have to negotiate with European partners to achieve that, now that we are outside the EU. I hope we can achieve that. We have started that with the EU reset, and we intend to see it through. My objective is to make sure that we have access to the information we had access to between 2015 and 2020.