Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)

My Lords, I declare my interest as a barrister, specialising in public law, including in immigration cases. I will speak to my Amendment 158—and I hope my amendment is not what has caused the Minister to vacate the Front Bench. The amendment would expand the UK’s interpretation of Article 33(2) of the refugee convention and includes an offence under Part III of the Immigration Act 1971 as a “particularly serious crime”. As noble Lords who are present in the Committee this evening will be well aware, Article 33 of the refugee convention is the provision which prohibits the expulsion or return of refugees or, in the lex specialis of refugee law, the refoulement provision. For the benefit of the record, Article 33(2) itself provides that: “The benefit of the present provision”— by that it means the provision of the benefits of the convention— “may not, however, be claimed by a refugee whom there are reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger to the security of the country in which he is, or who, having been convicted by a final judgement of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of that country”. In that provision, the drafters of the refugee convention envisaged a situation where a refugee could, as it were, avoid the benefit of the refugee convention by their own criminal action. What this amendment seeks to do is to insert the offences in Part III of the Immigration Act 1971 into the statutory definition of a “particularly serious crime”. The concept of a particularly serious crime is contained within Section 72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which was legislation brought forward by the previous Labour Government. That Act defined what a serious criminal offence was, and Section 72(1) begins: “This section applies for the purpose of the construction and application of Article 33(2) of the Refugee Convention (exclusion from prohibition of expulsion or return)”. It then goes on to set out what those exclusions are. This amendment seeks to amend subsequent legislation but ultimately impacts on the meaning of Section 72 of that Act. In so doing, it adopts the same model as the Government have provided in Clause 48 of the Bill, which provides that it amends Section 72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 by including various categories of offences as “particularly serious crimes”. The Committee will see—those who have a copy to hand—that at line 15 on page 45 of the Bill, that includes a person convicted of an offence “listed in Schedule 3 to the Sexual Offences Act 2003”, and so on. My amendment is very much in the same vein, and would insert: “A person is convicted by a final judgement of a particularly serious crime … if … convicted of an offence under … Part III of the Immigration Act 1971, or … sections 13, 14, or 18” of this Bill once it is enacted. Part III of the Immigration Act includes almost all immigration offences, including the offence of illegal entry into the United Kingdom. As the Committee will recall, that includes the offence, under Section 24, of being: “A person who knowingly enters the United Kingdom in breach of a deportation order … A person who … requires leave to enter the United Kingdom … and … knowingly enters the United Kingdom without such leave … A person who … has … limited leave to enter … and knowingly remains beyond the time limited by the leave … A person who … requires entry clearance … and knowingly arrives in the United Kingdom without a valid entry clearance”. It is a large list of offences, and would include illegal working, assisting unlawful immigration to a member state of the United Kingdom, helping an asylum seeker to enter the United Kingdom, assisting entry to the United Kingdom in breach of a deportation or exclusion order, facilitation offences, and general offences in connection with immigration including possession of a fraudulent registration card or immigration stamp. The purpose of the amendment is therefore to ensure that a person who is convicted of those offences is to be treated as having committed a “particularly serious crime” for the purposes of the refugee convention, in that they would therefore constitute a danger to the community. They would therefore be able to be removed or returned in a convention-compliant way. This amendment probes the Government’s intentions and the general approach they will adopt to perform a toughening up—as we have heard over recent days—of their immigration policy in as far as they are able in line with their international obligations. I have laid this amendment to explore what the Government suggest in this regard. It is clear, given the message we have heard in recent days about the willingness to adopt a fresh or tighter interpretation of Article 8 of the ECHR, that it may well be that the Government share my view on the proper interpretation of Article 33(2) of the refugee convention. It is consistent with the amendment I laid on the previous day of Committee on the need to come directly and the approach that can be taken on a clean review of the obligations and commitments made when we signed the refugee convention, without the barnacles of subsequent decisions. The proposed change in this amendment would permit the United Kingdom to return and deport anyone who enters illegally, regardless of whether they are a refugee or not. All this ties into a much overlooked provision of the refugee convention, one I am sure the Minister will be very interested to hear about: namely, the obligations in Article 2 of the refugee convention, which requires that every refugee has duties to the country in which he find himself, and that, in particular, he conform to its laws and regulations, as well as to measures taken for the maintenance of public order. One aspect of the refugee convention is that refugees are expected to conform to our law, and if they break our law then they cannot expect to have the protection of the convention. I beg to move Amendment 158.