Lord Sentamu (CB)

My Lords, I was not going to speak in this debate because we have had a fantastic presentation by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and the legal arguments were made by the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Carlile, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. They gave the legal basis for why this amendment ought to be accepted, but I am going to go in another direction—that of ethics. We as a society may say to ourselves, “We are built on the rule of law and in everything we do it is a mirror by which we are judged”. Then we get strangers whose language is not English and whose background is not that of our culture, and we say, “We really uphold the rule of law”. The best way to know whether we are doing that is, first, that no one is above the law, and, secondly, in how we apply the rule of law to those unfortunate to find themselves facing immigration questions so that people see that this is a society that does not simply talk about the rule of law but upholds it. We are going to be judged by the rule of law. Immigration is its most testing point. Immediately, people say that such people could be illegal and ask why we should give them legal aid, as it is going to be costly. But I am with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick: the question of cost cannot in the end trump the rule of law because, if you do not get good representation, you will find those cases going to appeal. If we have not carried out our obligations, we will find this question of the rule of law to be just words and words. Let me put it another way. Any civilised society that abides by the rule of law will be judged by the way it treats the stranger—the one whose habits and behaviour are not our norm. In the end, if this amendment is not allowed, something similar to it must be, if we really believe that we are a society built on the rule of law. We will know what we are when we treat the stranger with great disdain and think that anything will do. I know of many immigration appeal cases that happened because there was no legal representative. I know that some cases go wrong because they have not hired a legal person who understands the nuances. If we want to speed this up and hold a mirror to our society, it is what we do, particularly towards the stranger, that demonstrates how we uphold the rule of law. If we cannot, we should stop using these words.