Lord Harper (Con)

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the committee for the very thorough discussion they have had on the issues in the amendments. I have three points to make on what the noble Lord said. He will be pleased, I hope, that on at least one of them I am in some measure of agreement with him. I have some measure of agreement with the amendments that talk about those who have been trafficked. There is quite an important language point here on trafficking and smuggling. I make a distinction between those who have chosen to pay people smugglers to facilitate their journey across the channel and entry into the United Kingdom and those who have been forced to do so against their will. I have more sympathy for the aspect the noble Lord spoke about—where they are not party to their trafficking. I think the use of “trafficking” in this case is very important. There is a distinction, and I am more sympathetic to that. As the amendments are currently drafted, they would sweep up a number of conventions. I am just about to move on to the bit where I part company with the noble Lord. If he—or the Minister—were to come back later in the Bill with something to tighten up the protections for those who have been trafficked, that would be welcome. Where I part company with the noble Lord—there has been extensive discussion and, to be fair to the Joint Committee, it acknowledges that there are different views on this—is on Article 31 of the refugee convention. It protects refugees who come directly from the state where they face persecution. There is a very extensive discussion in the Joint Committee’s report on what coming directly means and the extent to which you are allowed a stopover—brief or not. It quotes some eminent legal views that a brief stopover—in other words, in France—does not stop people coming to the United Kingdom. But it also says that that view is not universally shared. I have to say, it is not a view I share. I think it is one of the reasons the public find this issue so troubling. I do not think the public have a problem with people who come directly from a state in which they are fleeing persecution and we give them support. I will cover two examples where I accept there were safe and legal routes. When I was a Member of Parliament, literally nobody in my former constituency had a problem with the route we created to protect those fleeing from Ukraine. Not a single person wrote to me complaining about that, because people saw that they were coming directly from a country that was at war and had been invaded. We created a route, and they supported that. Similarly, we had a scheme which enabled people, who we had a historical obligation to, fleeing the communist regime in Hong Kong to come to the United Kingdom. This is a problem because you have people in France who have come through a number—not just one—of European countries across land. They have entered the European Union in Greece and have come through a number of safe countries, spend quite a bit of time in France, then make a journey to the United Kingdom. I think a lot of people think that is not the situation envisaged by the refugee convention. They feel that that is our country being taken advantage of, which is what causes this pushback. That is what the Bill is trying to stop and there is a legitimate debate about that. It may be that we need to have a sensible international discussion about whether the 1951 convention is fit for purpose in the circumstances the noble Lord set out, where there are 120 million or so people who are refugees. They cannot all be accommodated in countries such as the United Kingdom. If we were to try to do that, we would find no support among the public and we would stop people who had a legitimate reason to be here. There is one part of the reasonable defence thing here where I think that the Government are perhaps being a little too generous. There are people who do not charge for their services who are genuinely well meaning; there are other people who fundamentally do not agree with having borders or Immigration Rules and sticking to them. The rules in the Bill are a little too generous. They do not have to be part of smuggling gangs but those organisations that are set up in France to make it easier for people to make those journeys should not be let off any culpability in this, whether or not they are charging for their services. If you know that people are making journeys that are unlawful and dangerous, and if you are helping people to do that, we should try to deter you. There is a legitimate argument about whether the Bill gets everything right, and people may argue that the penalties are too harsh or that this is not the right way in which to do it. But I think that there should be some sanctions.