My Lords, few situations are so bad that they cannot get worse, and certainly the current world migration crisis will inevitably get worse. Whether the UNHCR figure for those currently needing resettlement is 100 million or just tens of millions, future floods, fires, famines and human conflicts will inevitably drive it up. Obviously, it is insoluble by any single country, so—and this is the easy point to make—there must be international agreement as to what share of the burden we must all take. Of course, we must make the effort, but let us not pretend that it will succeed. It will not.
Each country, like the UK, must find its own solution, including sensibly—surely few would dispute—deciding on a cap for admissions and the best way for administering it. Plainly, this is by arranging safe and legal routes for the number decided on and, as under the several schemes currently operating—Ukraine, Hong Kong, Syria, Afghanistan, family members and so forth, some
directly involving the UNHCR, others not—giving proper consideration in advance of arrival to who should come.
Now that we have absorbed so many Ukrainians and Hong Kongers, surely the time is ripe for a wider new scheme, ideally in co-operation with the UNHCR, to admit more. Indeed, this now seems essential. Unless a generous, fresh resettlement scheme is decided on, there is little hope of persuading people to sign up to these obviously severe measures. Happily, most of this country is still hugely sympathetic to refugees.
How infinitely preferable would this be to the present chaotic situation of having to process those arriving after perilous boat and lorry crossings? As to these, one is entitled to ask: why should they steal a march and gain an advantage over those we will have agreed to take under the capped schemes? Surely it cannot be suggested that we should reduce the number we agree to take lawfully under these schemes to accommodate those coming by boat. Although I do not accept that those arriving from a safe third country, such as France or Belgium, are on that ground alone disqualified from refugee status—indeed, having myself in decades past judicially decided the contrary—there is no reason to ignore the fact that their lives were not in immediate danger when they took to the boats. They had the money to pay the smugglers and, in a number of cases, had already been refused asylum in France or plainly had no legitimate claim to asylum, as with most of the Albanians.
At the core of this Bill, therefore, necessarily lie the twin aims of introducing and enforcing a cap for the numbers we take in future and deterring all others from arriving illegally by ensuring that, with only the narrowest exceptions, they gain absolutely nothing from doing so. The need and basic justification for that is all that I have time for. Plainly, the Bill raises many different and difficult questions—on children, accompanied and unaccompanied; about whether, where and for how long to detain those coming illegally; about Rwanda; about modern slavery; about Article 39 interim orders; about the existing backlog, et cetera—but there is no time to discuss those today. No doubt the Bill can be improved in various ways, but we must recognise that almost every amendment we make to soften it can tend only to weaken its essential objectives: stopping the boats and—the real desire of many, sometimes perhaps masked by an avowed concern about deaths in the channel—limiting the overall numbers admitted.
We really must now harden our hearts and give the Government the opportunity by this Bill finally to confront this most intractable of problems. I hope not to lose too many of my friends by saying so.
12.48 pm