My Lords, there are two amendments in this group. The first, Amendment 124A, is about offences under Clause 39, which cover the majority of immigration offences. It seeks to provide a mechanism whereby victims of crime can safely report offences to the police without fear of the police sharing that information for the purposes of enforcing offences under Clause 39. As the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, explained, if the Government are serious about going after the people smugglers, they need to protect the victims of those people smugglers so that those people can come forward and give evidence against them and convict them.
Amendment 140 is specifically about preventing the personal data of victims of, and witnesses to, domestic abuse from being used for any immigration control purpose. This is not just about domestic violence but about rape and sexual exploitation, all of them offences where victims are reluctant to report to the police what has happened to them for fear of not being believed. They are offences where there is universal agreement that more needs to be done to encourage victims and survivors to come forward, to charge those responsible and to convict the guilty.
I was a serving senior police officer when I was the victim of domestic violence and even I did not report it, so imagine what it must be like if victims or witnesses are also concerned, rightly or wrongly, about their immigration status, particularly where the perpetrator exploits those concerns to threaten the victim or witness that if she reports the abuse to the police, he will make sure that they are reported to the immigration authorities —let alone about the police passing on information unprompted by the suspect.
It is about priorities. I know that everything is a priority for this Government—whatever the Oral Question is about, the Answer is invariably “X is a priority”—but
surely it is more important that a perpetrator of domestic violence and other unreported offences is convicted than that those instrumental in bringing the offender to justice are deported or removed. Of course, some might find that their concerns about their immigration status are unfounded, but you should not have to be a victim of crime to find that out.
The Government must do two things. First, they must not allow, as the amendments suggest, the personal data of migrant survivors of domestic abuse and other underreported crimes that are provided or used for the purposes of seeking or receiving support or assistance to be used for immigration control purposes.
Secondly, the Government should establish safe and confidential ways for people to establish their immigration status so that they can make informed decisions about taking steps to regularise their situation. That might even mean voluntary return, but they would maintain control. In other countries, helping overstayers to leave voluntarily is shown to be very effective compared with enforced removal. We strongly support the amendments.