This legislation inhibits the ability to look at facts, and I think that is quite a dangerous road to go down. I do not think that that is really what the Government ought to be doing in any circumstance. No matter how much they may wish their will upon the courts, they should not be doing this in legislation. It is completely wrong.
7.30 pm
Lords amendment 7B, on the age assessment of unaccompanied children, again asks quite reasonably that a relevant authority—a local authority—should have an expert carry out an age assessment on people whom they consider to be children. The Children’s Society has repeatedly said that it sees unaccompanied children being incorrectly assessed by immigration officials to be adults on arrival in the UK, so I think calling for a proper assessment is perfectly reasonable, rather than sending children off to Rwanda and then trying to retrieve them later. The harm that that could cause is really quite significant.
On the Government’s own figures, 485 children were wrongly assessed to be adults in the first six months of 2023. The Home Office gets this wrong quite regularly. The Helen Bamber Foundation has found that, over an 18-month period, 1,300 children were wrongly assessed to be adults, the majority being incorrectly assessed. So the Government really need to admit that they do get this wrong, and that they should not be sending children to Rwanda and then trying to retrieve them at some later stage, if—oops—somehow they got it wrong. Do it properly, and do the assessment at the beginning, rather than causing young people who have already suffered a huge amount of trauma yet more pain.
Moving to the insistence by the Lords that its amendment 9, on the removal of victims of modern slavery and human trafficking, be considered again, this is again hugely significant. This goes against our obligations on human trafficking, and we should not have a Government sending away people who have been trafficked with a significant risk that they may be re-trafficked and go through yet further trauma, with the impact that this will have on their physical and mental health and on their safety. That is something the Government really ought to be considering. Why would they not want to consider the risks of people who have been trafficked?
The Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre, led by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, has done significant work on this, and I would ask the House to consider its evidence about the breach of our obligations that the Government are embarking on. I think it is absolutely wrong that they should seek to do this to people who have already been through so much.