My Lords, I rise to speak to this group of amendments. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has added her name to Amendment 125, which has broad cross-party support. There are lots of different ways of approaching the same problem here. In some ways, it seems to me that Amendment 125 minimises the offence to making it only if it is done for financial gain. That is one way of coming at this, but, as we can see from the number of amendments—the Committee will be pleased to know that I will not run through them all—there is a huge amount of concern about this. When we look at the people who have signed some of the amendments, it is a pity that they are not able to be here tonight, for a variety of reasons. I will quote the noble Lord, Lord West, on the issue of pushbacks, who is on the record as saying that
“someone is likely to end up dead”.
That is the reality of what we are talking about here.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, referred to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, under which every state is required to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost and must proceed with all possible speed to the rescue of persons in distress. I do not think that there is any way that pushback can be lined up with that.
However, it is interesting that the amendment in this group signed by the noble Lord, Lord West, states:
“Nothing in this paragraph authorises any action or measure which is inconsistent with … international or legal obligations.”
What conditions have we got to when we have to write an amendment saying that we will follow international law?
I do not know which of these amendments is the right one. In some ways Amendment 132A would seem to cover it, because it says we should obey international law, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said in his energetic introduction—I want to come back to one more point—it is not just the Ministers who appear to disagree with different parts of the Government.
A tweet from the MoD five days ago stated that:
“The @RoyalNavy and @RoyalMarines will not be using push back tactics in the English Channel”.
I can only applaud that. However, the next part of the tweet is curious:
“although a military commander will retain the existing ability to instruct Border Force to use them when appropriate.”
I come back to the point about not breaking international law while saying that something is unacceptable for the Navy but is acceptable for Border Force under the instructions of the Navy. As the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said, what an absolutely disgraceful mess we are in.