My Lords, it is late but that does not make this clause or these amendments any less important, although whether at this hour I make any sense is another issue.
The amendments in this group seek to stop the proposed change from it being a criminal offence to “enter” the United Kingdom without a valid entry clearance to “arriving” in the UK without a valid entry clearance. I may have got this wrong but perhaps the Minister will confirm that an example of that is someone transiting through Heathrow Airport who remains airside and then departs on another flight without going through immigration control. The UK border is the e-passport gates and the staffed Border Force control points, so someone transiting has clearly arrived in the UK but has not entered it, or at least they will not have entered the UK unless and until they have passed through the UK border. Similarly, those detained or granted immigration bail are not considered to have entered the UK even after they have left the immigration control area. With the change that the amendments seek to prevent, anyone who claims asylum in the UK territorial seas or at the UK border will be committing a criminal offence, whereas now they do not.
The Government have made much of the “first safe country” principle, which does not actually exist, wrongly interpreting it to mean that people cannot even transit through another country in order to claim asylum in the UK without their claim being deemed inadmissible. This change goes even further. Even if an asylum seeker flies direct from a war-torn country, or a country where they are being persecuted, and arrives on a flight at Heathrow, for example, they will commit a criminal offence. Arguably, that is the case even if they have a visa or do not need one but arrive in the UK for a different purpose—that is, to claim asylum. For example, someone coming from a country where a visa is not required to visit the UK as a tourist for six months or less who then claims asylum at the UK border could be regarded as not having valid entry clearance, as they are allowed to enter the UK for the sole purpose of visiting as a tourist.
As I said on a previous group when I drew the analogy with the misuse of drugs, almost all the provisions in the Bill are targeted at the users—asylum seekers, the victims of war, of persecution and of people smugglers—and not the real criminals of the piece, who are the dealers, or in this case the people smugglers. When I was a police commander in Lambeth, I got into trouble for using undiplomatic language when I suggested on social media in relation to drugs that we needed to help the users and screw the dealers. The more serious point here is that criminalising victims is not the way forward. We support all the amendments in this group that seek to change that. Amendment 124 seeks to extend the statutory defence based on Article 31 of the refugee convention to any new offence—but the new offence should not stand part of the Bill.