Lord Harper (Con)

My Lords, on the overall issue, I strongly support the various provisions in legislation to make sure that victims of modern slavery and trafficking are properly protected. There is, however, a balance to strike, because the people we want to protect are actual victims of modern slavery and trafficking. We have to be very careful because, if you have a blanket exemption for anyone who claims to be a victim of modern slavery and trafficking, you just create a massive gap in our laws where anybody who is then intercepted ends up claiming to be a victim of modern slavery and trafficking to avoid being removed from the country. That has two incredibly damaging consequences. One is that they are able to undercut our immigration control, but they also damage public support for and acceptance of genuine victims of modern slavery and trafficking. We have to have a system which recognises that there are many bad actors out there who will take advantage of every weakness in our legislation. I do not support the first amendment in this group, which seeks to get rid of the Home Secretary’s ability to remove people who have sought to use modern slavery protections in bad faith: the sorts of people I have talked about who try to use these provisions, where they do not apply, to try to avoid our immigration controls. I think it is reasonable that the Home Secretary is able to do that. I know from my experience, and I have no reason to suspect it is now any different, that the officials in the Home Office who look after this area of policy are expert, competent people who do their very best to try to make these decisions. I have met victims of modern slavery. I met the people who implemented this legislation when my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead was Home Secretary and I was in the Home Office, and I have a lot of confidence that they get the decisions right—not in 100% of cases, because people are not perfect, but I think we have a good system—but we have to have the power to deal with people who act in bad faith. Amendment 117 repeals a whole bunch of sections of the Nationality and Borders Act that actually provide the protections for victims of modern slavery, such as their ability to get leave to stay in the United Kingdom for a period of up to 60 months and to have a recovery period. Those are all very valuable protections that ought to remain, so I do not support that amendment. Very briefly, given that my noble friend Lady May is not able to be here, I briefly support the thrust of her amendment, Amendment 183. That looks at making sure that people who are victims of modern slavery and perhaps have committed criminal offences but under duress are not then punished for a second time as a result of only having committed those offences under duress. I think that amendment has a lot of merit. If my noble friend Lady May were to bring it back on Report, I would consider supporting it. If there are any flaws or weaknesses in the way it is drafted, it would be good if the Minister were able to set them out today or would engage with my noble friend and the people who have supported the amendment to deal with them so that we could have an agreed position on Report. With those relatively brief comments and mindful of time, I will sit down.