Lord German (LD)

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 46 and 55 in my name. We are again back to this issue of ensuring that refugees, victims of modern slavery, are not unfairly prosecuted for behaviour committed due to coercion or exploitation. I am very grateful to the Minister for saying that the focus of the Bill is the smugglers. The problem is that there is no stipulation in the Bill that to be guilty, the person must be a trafficker or a smuggler. We want to ensure that refugees, victims of modern slavery, cannot be unfairly prosecuted for behaviour committed in the course of their actions. Amendment 46 seeks to set out in Clause 14 that those involved in organised immigration crime, rather than those seeking asylum, are the ones who are to be prosecuted, by strengthening the statutory defence, which we have already heard from the Minister concerns finance. I am always open to suggestions on how else you might distinguish between an asylum seeker and a smuggler, in which case one could extend the definition. The offences this Bill creates are very substantial, and rightly so. We support them. In Clause 14, on handling articles for use in immigration crime, there is a 14-year maximum prison sentence. It is the same for Clause 16, with five years’ imprisonment in Clause 18 and six years’ and five years’ imprisonment in further clauses. These are substantial periods of imprisonment, and these are substantial cases, so it is very important that nothing happens that allows people to slip through the net. Given the severity of those four sentences, it is critical that we take a very careful approach to drafting the new offences, in order to safeguard against any unintended consequences such as the criminalisation of those seeking asylum. The Bill, of course, as we now know, is widely drafted for prosecution to try to deliberately catch those acting at a distance from, as well as close to, the acts of smuggling. The broad construction of these offences as currently drafted could unintentionally catch vulnerable individuals such as asylum seekers and victims of trafficking. We have already heard the case of the young man who was forced to drive one of these very unsafe boats across the channel and was prosecuted as a result of that.