My Lords, I want to briefly make some observations about the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and ask the Minister one or two questions of clarification. Before I do, I point to my interests in the register and make it clear that I am speaking in a personal capacity.
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On the observation about safe routes so rightly alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, in my understanding there is no rule in refugee and asylum status requiring that you are not permitted to come from a safe country. Leaving aside the fact that some countries are deemed to be those from which we are meant to accept refugees according to the UN system, the UN does not seem to implement a declared safe country status. Is the Minister able to clarify this for me, because I have been asking different people that question but never seem to get a clear answer?
I will make a point to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, on his comments about refugees coming from France and Germany. I have lived in both countries and am familiar with routes of migration into those countries. I also declare my interest of working in the Commonwealth Secretariat, so I am also familiar with people from the 55 other member countries of the Commonwealth coming to, or wishing to come to, the UK. The singular point made by people who come to this country from France and Germany is that they have a system of identification—ID cards or ID documents of one kind or another—that prevents refugees who arrive there disappearing into the ether. We know that in the UK, for example, many people who overstay their visa—in other words, who are not refugees or asylum seekers, but who simply add to the pressures on housing and all the other things the noble Lord talked about—are people who come here by the route of tourism and do not leave the country. This is because, previously, we never counted them out.
The bottom line is that his party and the Liberal Democrats—although I must confess that I probably voted with the latter at the time—vetoed the now Opposition’s attempts in 2006 to bring in ID cards. The fact that we do not have any form of identification in this country to identify whether people are legal, other than using landlords as a means of keeping people out of rented accommodation, is problematic. Perhaps if we addressed the overstays of visas, all the other things—the population, housing and education pressures that the noble Lord talked about—could be
dealt with. In France, I was checked numerous times going about my normal business—I did not particularly like it—to see whether I was legal in France or not. Had I not been found to be legal, there would have been a different way of dealing with me, but at least they knew who was there through that system, which we do not have here.