Lord German (LD)

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 116 and 118 in my name. This is a bit of a reversal, because it is looking not at what is happening but at what is left behind. I am asking the Government to consider this in some detail, so I am worried that the Minister may have some difficulty answering all the questions. If it is not possible, I am hopeful that we will get the answers in writing later. The position is this. We support the repeal of the provisions in the Illegal Migration Act. What I am concerned about is what policy is left behind when you take those out. As it stands, in several places the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 will become the default directive, even though this was not regarded as being something of satisfaction when that Bill went through this House, so there are concerns about what is left in that area. This amendment brings together a range of issues, presenting the Government with the opportunity to explain the continuing concerns about the aspects of the Nationality and Borders Act that they have chosen to not repeal in this Bill but to rely on in sections where the IMA has been taken out from it. There are sections of the Nationality and Borders Act which worsen the risk of violations of human rights, build further delays into the asylum system and increase the likelihood of legal challenges and judicial reviews in the future. I will dwell on several sections, but there are more than I am speaking about in the whole of this area. Section 12 of the Nationality and Borders Act is officially paused, but it allows for differential treatment between different groups of refugees, dependent on how they arrived in the United Kingdom. Can the Minister explain why the Government wish to retain that ability, even though it has not been brought in yet? Why are the Government retaining this section? If it is for operational benefit again, it would be useful to know what the operational benefit is. The main issue of concern with Section 13 of the Nationality and Borders Act is that subsection (9) could lead to people being held in accommodation centres, including at such large sites as Wethersfield, for lengthy periods of time. Before the Nationality and Borders Act, there was a limit of a continuous period of six months, which could be extended to nine months by the Secretary of State. This section of the NaBA enables the Secretary of State to increase the time. There are ongoing concerns about the conditions of asylum accommodation, particularly the large sites such as Napier and Wethersfield, and there seems to be a pattern of repeating mistakes rather than learning from them. Safeguards are therefore important and it is concerning that this section, which we will fall back on, would enable people to be accommodated at such sites with no indication of how long they will be there for. My personal experience when I visited Wethersfield was that it was quite clear that, when people understood that they were going to be there for a maximum of nine months, it reduced the concerns and increased the well-being of residents. So, having a time limit is very important. Section 14 is about safe countries, but we have already debated that. Section 18, which is not in force, creates a requirement to provide evidence. The argument about this is that it can only lead to additional bureaucracy for the Home Office. Providing evidence is part of the existing process for applying for asylum. If evidence is provided at appeal which could have been provided at the initial decision stage, the immigration judge will seek an explanation for this, and that could impact an individual’s credibility. With very tight deadlines, it could be a short window of time to provide the evidence. Also, it might be difficult, if not impossible, for individuals to provide the necessary evidence if they are unrepresented, and more than half of asylum claimants are currently without legal representation owing to the legal aid shortage. Section 19, which is not in force, amends the assessment of whether to treat a person as truthful. That may be a straightforward assessment, but I do not know how it might work. Sections 20 to 25—also not in force, but the Government are retaining them—relate to priority removal notices, which warn people that they are being prioritised for removal. The person then needs to respond in the cut-off period. If they respond late, it will damage their credibility unless they have a good reason. The concern about this is that a late claim is not necessarily without merit. It can take time for people to make a claim, because they are suffering from trauma relating to torture or sexual violence. It is unclear whether these reasons could be included in the good reason element of the priority removal notice, but it builds on a culture of disbelief in a decision-making process that already exists and is widely relied on. The inference is that not providing responses in time indicates the poor credibility of a person, which could result in improper refusal of protection claims. Section 27 creates, although it has not yet happened, an accelerated detained appeal system in the First-tier Tribunal, which can be used for any detained appeal if it is considered that the appeal is likely to be disposed of expeditiously using the fast-track procedure. At the time, of course, it was an attempt by the Government to revive the detained fast-track scheme, but the Court of Appeal ruled it unlawful in 2015, and it described the timetable for such appeals as so tight that it was inevitable that a significant number of appellants would be denied a fair opportunity to present their cases. So what is the operational reason for retaining the ability to have an accelerated detained appeals system? If there is an operational reason for it, perhaps the Minister could tell us. Section 29 makes it possible to move someone to a safe third country when their asylum claim is pending—not when it has been determined but when it is pending. In other words, while there is an appeal going on or a claim is being determined by the Home Office, you could deport someone in that process. That removes important rights of appeal. Members of this Committee will remember that, when we discussed the difficulty with the Rwanda scheme, people were going to have to make appeals from another country, and it would have been very difficult to maintain any means of correct procedure in that respect. I am sorry this speech is quite long, but these are very important issues. Each one of them is about what the Bill does in making this the fall-back position that we are falling on. Sections 30 to 38 require decision-makers to interpret the refugee convention in ways that do not accord with the long-settled meaning of that convention. We may already have had that discussion earlier today, and most of the interpretations concern Article 1A(2), which of course we have talked about, and we will further exhaust that when I talk about Amendment 118 in a moment. Sections 40 to 41 relate to the criminalisation of asylum seekers. Those who arrive outside official routes in the UK, and people who facilitate arrivals, are committing an offence under this Act and are liable to prosecution. I understand the difficulties that there are with that one, but it is one that the Government need to describe so we have it on the record as to why that is important. Sections 42 to 47 significantly expand maritime enforcement powers for pushbacks in international waters, removing the requirement to consider the duty of rescue. That is a fundamental in international maritime law; although it may not have been used yet, this is what the law will now say and it is important to understand why the Government want to retain that. Sections 49 to 57 deal with age assessments, which we have just dealt with in the previous group, and Sections 58 to 63 exclude people, including children, from modern slavery protections if they have received a prison sentence of 12 months or more, even if the offence was committed as a result of their exploitation. The Government have distanced themselves in that respect from some, or indeed many, of these issues, so the question is why they are being kept. I turn to Amendment 118, which is really an exploration of changes in the rates of refusal of asylum, which is particularly marked in in relation to Afghans, Iranians and Eritrean people claiming asylum. There has been a dramatic decline in the initial grant rate of asylum applications from those three countries. In the last two years of the previous Government, the grant rate of Afghan asylum claims stood at 98%. In the first year of this Government, that grant rate more than halved to 44%; the average grant rate for Afghans across the EU as a whole was 72% in Q1 of 2025. Eritrean grant rates are down by 13%; those of Iranians reduced by 26%. I do not observe any positive changes inside those countries during the relevant periods—certainly no change in Eritrea. The Taliban rule has been more oppressive and the human rights situation in Iran remains dire.