Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)

My Lords, I apologise for not being here for the first day in Committee. I was with colleagues as part of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe. Of course, I spoke at Second Reading. Sadly, after the debate on the previous group, it seems that I have to declare an interest as the former director of Liberty. It is not something that I do very often but, given some of the disparaging remarks about my former employer, I thought I had better declare that as some kind of interest. Apparently, to have worked for a cross-party or non-party human rights NGO is now an issue. I should add that in my many years working at the National Council for Civil Liberties, I worked across this House and the other place, including with some very senior Conservatives, who believed very much in fundamental rights and freedoms. I guess that was then and this, unfortunately, is now. As a preliminary point, on the previous group I was slightly flummoxed by contributions from across the Committee on the Clause 13 offence and defences. Forgive me, I have been a lawyer for only 30 years, but it is easier to prove that I was reckless in my behaviour than to prove that I had actual knowledge or suspicion. If I am right about that, I am flummoxed by every contribution from around the Committee on whether it should be knowledge and suspicion or intention and recklessness—but that was the previous group. In relation to this group, I have to commend the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and his committee and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for amendments that square very well with—I will not call it a platitude—the caveat that the noble Lord, Lord Harper, gave to his other comments: that he does care about genuine refugees. If I am to take that as a real commitment to genuine refugees who are not abusing or playing any system but are in peril in their home country and fleeing persecution, if that is the commitment—I know it is the commitment from my noble friend the Minister—then I suggest that none of the amendments in this group contradicts the intention that we are going for the smugglers, going for the traffickers, going for the people who are making money out of people’s desperation, but not going for innocents. Of course, the nature of protecting genuine refugees is that you do not know who will turn out to be a convention refugee until you process them. That means that we have to be a little bit careful about how we go after the people who are coming before we have actually considered their case. To go back to various comments that have been made about the historic origins of the refugee convention, I just remind the Committee that this was the world’s apology for the Holocaust, and that people who fled the Nazis in the 1930s often had to do so by irregular and clandestine means. For those who need a reminder, I recommend “Julia”, the 1977 Fred Zinnemann film starring Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. It would not be a bad thing for every participant in this Committee to revisit that Oscar-winning film, perhaps over the recess, before coming back for many more hours of deliberation on this Bill. The reason that these amendments are good ones that do not undermine the intention of the Bill but actually speak, to some extent, to the slightly confusing debate on the previous group is, first, that they make it clear that we are going after the people who are monetising this desperation, perpetrating the evil trade and putting people’s lives at risk in the English Channel. The amendments put that squarely into the Bill. Secondly, they refer to the refugee convention, which I know will raise some hackles on the Benches opposite. I believe it is the Government’s intention to comply with the refugee convention as well as the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Convention on Human Rights has to be dealt with on the front cover of the Bill, as per the Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act will also be the interpretive method for looking at the Bill, but there is not anything like that for the refugee convention. What there is instead is a tradition that was begun by a previous Conservative Government in the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993. Check the date: it was a Conservative Government, if I have my history right, who introduced the principle, initially into the Immigration Rules, that the refugee convention has primacy in the context of treating refugees, because the intention of that Government, and previous Conservative Governments, was to comply not just with the European Convention on Human Rights but with the refugee convention as well. Because we have moved towards criminalisation—not just considering claims, appeals and removals—it becomes important that the refugee convention provides a defence for various immigration offences that are subsequently created. That is why the Joint Committee on Human Rights—a wonderful institution of this Parliament—has stepped in to make sure that no prosecution or conviction under any of these offences will offend the refugee convention. I can put it no better than the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who said that we do not want to use these offences. It cannot be the Government’s intention that these offences and prosecutions are for the victims rather than the smugglers. That is the best comment I can make in support of this group. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, a long-term advocate of the most vulnerable and refugees in particular, has an obvious point about feminine hygiene products. It would be strangely gendered for the Government not to consider adding that to food, et cetera, when we are talking about human dignity. I commend all these amendments to the Committee.