My Lords, what an absolute pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who is a living example of what happens when a country opens its hearts to refugees and how those people can then settle here and contribute to the future prosperity of the nation that they make their home.
This Bill has already failed in its primary purpose, set by senior government leaders. It failed on Thursday, when the results from the red and blue wall seats came in and demonstrated that the Bill had not delivered Conservatives the votes that they sought. This is not a
Bill to deal effectively, sensitively and humanely with those seeking refuge via unofficial routes. There is no such thing as an illegal route—there are unofficial routes into the UK, sometimes in very dangerous situations that could cause loss of life.
The Bill is highly political and has nothing to offer in getting rid of the backlog of asylum claims. It has nothing to offer to effectively deter the real criminals, those who traffic and profiteer from the desperation and misery of those seeking asylum in the UK, and it is not effective in building a coalition of international partners to work across the globe to deal with this.
For the Home Secretary, the Bill is about trying to win votes in some parliamentary seats by using language that dehumanises people and using traumatised and vulnerable people as political pawns. The Government say the Bill is about stopping the boats, which it will not do. Because of that, this House has a duty to stop the bull.
The Government have no clue how this will all work out. If they had, they would have published an impact assessment. They know that doing so would expose the false nature of their proposals and claims about what the Bill will achieve. One third country, Rwanda, has signed up to this deal to offshore the UK’s obligations to process and settle those seeking asylum in the UK. Rwanda will be able to take a maximum of only a few hundred people in the next few years.
The Government can make a wish list of third countries and put it in the Bill, but it would mean nothing. No other country has signed up and the Government know that they are light years away—if not further—from getting enough third countries to take the number of people that will seek asylum in the UK via unofficial routes. That will therefore lead to many hundreds of thousands of individuals stuck in limbo in new Home Office refugee prisons, as no other options are available under the Bill.
Where will vulnerable and traumatised individuals be imprisoned by the Home Office? These Home Office refugee prisons have to be identified, commissioned and, in some cases, built, whether they float or are on terra firma. According to the Refugee Council, these places will cost the taxpayer an extra £6 billion in the next few years. It is impractical, expensive and inhumane. That is not how a proud and decent country deals with those fleeing war, torture and rape.
How the Government of a nation deal with the most vulnerable says a lot about their values. The Government have chosen to treat unaccompanied children seeking refuge—some of whom will have seen their parents killed, or acts of war, or who will have been sexually exploited and trafficked to the UK—as criminals not worthy of having the dignity, hope and opportunity to rebuild their lives and settle here in the UK.
Under the Bill, children can be detained at the Home Secretary’s wish and for as long as she sees fit: a child version of refugee prisons. It is entirely unclear how the powers set out in the Bill will sit alongside local authorities’ duty under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 to safeguard any child in their area and take them into care under Section 20 if the criteria for so doing are met. The Bill has the potential to make it harder for local authorities to fulfil their duties under
the Children Act to ensure stability for children as their corporate parent and to protect and support child victims of trafficking and exploitation.
If a child is lucky enough to be in the care of a local authority until the age of 18 and has the protections of looked-after status in law, just what awaits them on their 18th birthday? Imagine a traumatised and vulnerable child who arrives in the UK aged eight spending 10 years building a life, a network of support and friends and getting educated here, knowing nothing but a life in the UK, and then the Government snatching that all away from them and throwing them out of the country to God knows where at the age of 18. Do the Government not understand how impractical and inhumane this is? It is inhumane, as thousands of young people getting near the age of 18 will just disappear, many into the hands of criminals and traffickers, and it is impractical, as we are back to the imaginary third countries which will not be waiting with places to take these individuals, so they will be left in limbo in an adult Home Office refugee prison.
As well as impractical and inhumane, the Bill is ineffective. It is built on the ridiculous premise that the only way to stop the traffickers profiteering is to criminalise their vulnerable victims and treat them in a subhuman way. The Bill undermines our commitment to international law and our obligations under the UN conventions on refugees and the child, and it degrades what it means to be British. It trashes our proud and long-held values and our record, dating back to 1951, on how we deal with those seeking asylum. It undermines our country’s international standing for upholding and abiding by international law.
For these and many other reasons, the Bill has no place on the statute book. It must be placed in the dustbin of history as soon as possible. That is why I will support my noble friend Lord Paddick’s fatal amendment to ensure that the Bill does not pass Second Reading.
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