Nationality and Borders Bill

Committee (4th Day)

Clause 28: Removal of asylum seeker to safe country

Amendment 100

100: Clause 28, page 33, line 20, leave out paragraph (a) Member’s explanatory statement This amendment is linked to the amendment to leave out paragraphs 1 and 2 of Schedule 3.

My Lords, I hope that I will not bore you for long. I shall take careful note of the Chief Whip’s remarks but I am very pleased to introduce Amendments 100, 101 and 102. I thank those Lords spiritual and temporal who have added their names to these amendments and who are supportive of the contents.

These amendments seek to remove amendments to Section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 from Schedule 3. The intention is to erase the proposal contained in the Bill to introduce powers to export offshore any person in the UK who is seeking asylum without first considering their claim. Few would disagree that protection and control of our borders, primary responsibilities of any Government, are noble and necessary objectives. A Home Secretary must be able to discharge her duties in this respect, which include expediting deportation swiftly and without delay where illegality has been determined under the rules. This was certainly my approach when I served as Immigration Minister in the 1990s.

Most would agree that the process by which we pursue these objectives matters no less than the solutions on the table. Indeed, solutions need to be effective, but they must also be pragmatic and practical, and enforceable under domestic and international law. They need to be imaginative but also financially viable. They must be firm but also fair. I am afraid that Clause 28 and Schedule 3 fail on these counts. In very literal terms, Clause 28 amends the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which states that a person seeking asylum cannot be removed from the UK while their asylum claim is being processed—in other words, before a final decision is given on their refugee status, including access to an appeal. However, paragraph 1 of Schedule 3 to the Bill withdraws those rights by allowing the transfer of any asylum seeker to any country which will be listed in Section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 as amended by Schedule 3.

Turning the asylum process on its head in this way draws us on to shaky ground, posing numerous questions that the Government have not yet answered. We still do not know which country might be willing to act as a hub. Albania and Norway have outrightly rejected the offer. Rwanda may or may not be in the running, and there are rumours of Ascension Island—a place with no infrastructure, no means of direct access and no real links to the outside world. We also do not know how the migrants would be treated once they were there. In the Australian centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, reports of mistreatment and indefinite detention abounded, with cases of people being left in limbo for as long as eight years. Senior UN officials described the Nauru camp as cruel and inhuman, and many other notable activists similarly decried its record.

The Government claim, and will no doubt continue to claim in relation to Clause 28, that there is an absolute bar on removing an individual from the UK where there is a real risk that they will experience torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, yet some of the countries under consideration can hardly be described as exemplars of rules and rights. The truth is that, once outside the UK’s jurisdiction, people sent offshore will have none of the safeguards of UK law. I cannot see how this would work or how it could be acceptable.

On top of that, we do not know for sure whether those asylum seekers who have had their applications accepted would then be allowed to come into the UK. Existing UK case law holds that an asylum seeker cannot be granted asylum unless they are in the UK at the time of decision, but this Bill provides no power for the UK to readmit them or grant them any form of leave, and neither does it explain what will happen to those who have had their applications rejected. Where, if anywhere, will they be sent? What support, if any, will they receive? People’s lives are then at stake.

The extent of the powers conferred by such legislation necessitate clearly defined and transparent policies. It is not at all clear how this policy would work. We know that the Australian experiment on which this policy was modelled was a failure—one centre has been completely abandoned, and one no longer accepts new refugees, though the latter is still costing the Australians billions of dollars to maintain.

We also know that offshoring is ineffective as a deterrent to boat crossings. More people arrived by boat in Australia in the first year of offshore detention than in any previous year. The authorities resorted to using maritime interceptions instead, with the Australian navy endangering lives as a result. This is such an appalling prospect here, and I was relieved that border coastguards have ruled themselves out of any such endeavour. The so-called deterrent did not work there and would not work here.

We know that the costs of offshoring would be exorbitant—current conservative estimates put them at £2 million per person per year. We are talking about a bill running into the tens of billions of pounds. It is an astronomical sum of taxpayers’ money to pump into a project so fraught with problems. I pity the Minister who would have to justify this expense to the public at a time of serious economic uncertainty.

Finally, there is no question that we need urgent action and we need to be decisive. But decisive should never mean draconian. Current problems cannot be remedied by harsher policies. Offshoring is an extreme solution that is practically flawed, morally dubious and destined to fail. If the United Kingdom truly wants to be firm and fair, we must not allow this clause on to our statute book. I beg to move.

My Lords, in rising to support Amendments 100 and 101, to which I have added my name, I declare my interests in relation to both the RAMP project and Reset, as set out in the register.

When people arrive on our shores seeking protection, we have a responsibility to treat them as we would wish to be treated if we had to flee for our lives. It is right that we have a process to determine who meets the criteria for refugee status, but while we determine this, we are responsible for people’s safety, welfare and care. If we move them to other countries for the processing of their asylum claims, I fear a blind eye will be turned to their treatment. How will we be sure that they are being treated humanely and fairly, and would our Government even give this much concern once they had left our shores? If we look to the experience of Australia and the refugees accommodated in Nauru, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, has just mentioned, we hear deeply shocking accounts of abuse, inhumane treatment and mental and physical ill-health.

As mentioned in relation to an earlier amendment, I visited Napier barracks last week to see improvements that have been made since the exposure of the disgraceful conditions at the beginning of last year. If what we have seen at Napier is permitted to happen in the UK, what can we expect overseas, where accountability and monitoring will be so much harder? The monitoring of asylum accommodation contractors in the UK is poor, which gives us some idea about the level of monitoring we could expect of offshore processing.

What standard will be set for offshore accommodation? Will it be detention? How can UK safeguards be enforced in another country? Will there be a maximum period of stay? Minister Tom Pursglove stated in the Public Bill Committee that

“we intend their claims to be admitted and processed under the third country’s asylum system.”—[Official Report, Commons, Nationality and Borders Bill Committee, 26/10/21; col. 397.]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 100, in the name of my noble friend Lord Kirkhope, to which I have been pleased to add my name. I refer to my entry in the register of Members’ interests.

The question of offshore detention is undoubtedly one of the most controversial aspects of this Bill, which is designed to stem the flow of small boats from France. The stated objective of this policy is one of deterrence, but opponents of the policy have rightly been asking: at what cost?

Before we look at the issue of offshoring, I will take a moment to look at and think about the sorts of journeys taken by those fleeing violence and war. Asylum seekers are frequently exposed to intolerable levels of risk as they travel. Irregular migrants face dangerous journeys: they are unprotected, they accumulate debt, and they have no legal recourse. The limited opportunities for legal migration force individuals to use people smugglers where there is a risk of being trafficked. Asylum seekers who fall prey to human traffickers can be exploited in both transit and destination countries. During the asylum seeker’s journey, the fine line with human trafficking—the acquisition of people by force, fraud or deception with the aim of exploiting them—can be easily crossed.

Just imagine you go through all that and end up on these shores. It has taken your savings and months of your life to arrive here from, say, Afghanistan, Syria or Iran. On arrival on our shores, we greet you and, before we have even assessed whether or not you are a refugee, put you on a plane and take you back to the continent from which you came. That action alone could kill someone, but my question is also: what does that make us?

Before I set out my reason for asking the Home Secretary to think again about the use of offshore detention and processing, whether in Rwanda, Ghana or Ascension Island, as we have heard, I will return to the point I made last Tuesday. The best hope of a fair, just and affordable solution to the issue of the Calais boats still lies with a diplomatic solution with the French and EU nations. Will my noble friend the Minister comment on the Telegraph story on Wednesday about the French President’s apparent openness to a deal over channel crossings? As I have suggested a number of times, a returns agreement with the French is likely to be the only viable way to stop the crossings. I imagine this taking the form of an agreement that those who have crossed here irregularly are sent back to be assessed in France; in return, we commit to taking a certain number from Calais. This is a win-win solution that would genuinely destroy the economic model of the people smugglers, would cost less and would be far more humane.

Outside on the streets today are people supporting those of us who are fighting this Bill. They understand the damage it does not only to the refugees and people seeking asylum here but to the Government’s reputation. I do wonder. We have to say these things, because our consciences would not let us not say them, but are the Government listening? I rather think not. Essentially, these clauses are about being able to deport refugees while their asylum claim is being processed. That is not fair on the individuals involved and, I would argue, is inhumane. They are simply being herded like cattle and packed off to be trafficked, essentially.

Clause 28 and Schedule 3 make provision for safe countries, but no provision for safe accommodation. We know that the accommodation we provide here in the UK is pretty substandard and, sometimes, outright revolting, so I have no trust that safe countries will do any better than we have. I have a question that I would like answered today: what steps will the Government take to assess the conditions and that these people are being treated well in those safe countries?