Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their engagement in this group, even though some engagement was with a rather broader brush than ideally one would like in Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, did not need to be self-deprecating about not being a lawyer, nor did other noble Lords need to damn my amendments with faint praise for being surprisingly “legally coherent”, even though they disagreed with the substance. Some noble Lords were of course going to use these amendments for the big debate that rages in our countries at the moment around the refugee convention. However, to go to the detail of my amendments, neither of them would affect the big debate about whether we should be in or out of the refugee convention, or whether we should be in it but periodically ignore it. My amendments were attempting to achieve some coherence in our statute book, which I think is what a Committee stage on a borders Bill should be about. There are anomalies in the way that we are half-pregnant with the refugee convention at the moment. The noble Lord, Lord Harper, did not quite believe me when I said that Section 2 of the 1993 Act already provides that the Immigration Rules may not conflict with the refugee convention and therefore courts may decide on that matter. I would like him to believe me or, if he does not, to look at the statute, because Section 2 of the 1993 Act is still in force. The noble Lord then said that if what I say is correct, we would not need my amendment, but of course the rules are just the rules. Underneath the Immigration Rules there are executive decisions and guidance, and above the rules there is legislation. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, rightly and understandably brought up the question of democracy, and other noble Lords engaged in the age-old debate about what democracy is and the relationship between elected parts of the constitution and the courts. There must be a relationship between the two because there is no democracy without the rule of law and arbitrary decisions could be made. The moment you legislate, you are passing some role to the judiciary. Some of us are happy with that and some of us do not want quite so much of that, but my amendments would expressly preserve parliamentary sovereignty as the overriding principle in our legislation, even under the Human Rights Act. On Amendment 185, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for identifying the point I make about the anomaly in the current position. I am sorry to the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, because clearly I did not make myself clear enough in my opening remarks; he said that my amendment would be a licence for people to come with forged papers. The anomaly I refer to is that, as a refugee with forged papers, you get protection from prosecution now, but not as a refugee with no papers. That is the detail of what I was trying to achieve in these specific amendments, notwithstanding this very general debate, and I am grateful for that. For the moment at least, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.