Member

Labour in opposition supported every one of the Lords amendments, and noble Lords defeated the then Government 19 times, seeking to mitigate the worst excesses of that Bill, which sought to reinterpret and chip away at the refugee convention—it criminalised the act of arriving as a refugee. Since then, 556 people arriving by small boat were charged with illegal arrival and 455 were convicted. The vast majority of those charged and convicted had ongoing claims for asylum, as well as experiences of trafficking and/or torture. When noble Lords decided against sending the Nationality and Borders Bill back to the other place for a fourth time, my noble friend Lord Coaker promised that the battle