I know the convention of the House is that I should say it is a pleasure to follow two such brilliant speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Lister, but it is not actually a pleasure—it is intimidating; one fears the contrast. Mine will be an amateur contribution after those of two professionals.
I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its report, particularly because it draws our attention to the evidence the Home Office gave in answer to its questions. The answers from the Home Office struck me as a little unsatisfactory and, in one or two cases, astonishing. With your Lordships’ permission, I will give just one example, on the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about the absence of the impact assessment. Here was the Home Office’s answer:
“The Home Office has not produced”
an impact assessment
“due to the uncertainties regarding wider implementation”
of scientific age assessment
“within the end-to-end age assessment model”.
If you can understand that, you are smarter than me. But it gets better:
“It is the Home Office’s view to wait until we have an appropriate level of detail to better reassure and inform the public of our plans, especially given the controversial nature of the policy. As policy and operational development continues, the Home Office will take a view as to when it is appropriate to produce an impact assessment”.
Well, that is nice of them. If you are buying a house, it is quite a good idea to have the survey done before completion of the deal. If one is buying shares, it is quite nice to see the prospectus for the sale of the shares before one makes the investment. And the purpose of an impact assessment is to accompany the legislative proposal and inform the legislator.
It is, of course, very important that the Home Office should monitor how these age assessments work out, but that is a completely different question from the need to provide an assessment ab initio of what the impact is expected to be. For the Home Office to say that it is better
“to wait until we have an appropriate level of detail to better reassure and inform the public of our plans, especially given the controversial nature of the policy”,
is frankly absurd.
I have four questions for the Minister. The first is really a question from the Children’s Commissioner in the evidence we have seen: can a child truly consent to a procedure if they know they may be punished if they do not consent? The Children's Commissioner thinks not. The young refugee, threatened with X-rays, might be bewildered, traumatised, frightened, and may not understand English; he may not understand the questions put to him or anything of what is going on. The Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee advised in January that
“no automatic assumptions or consequences should result from refusal to consent”.
Why have the Government ignored what the committee said?
My second question is: how safe is the procedure? The committee is clearly uneasy. It says:
“The use of ionising radiation must be limited, with the ultimate aim of eradicating it”.
That is the position of the Government’s official advisers. The Council of Europe says that that the use of radiation for age assessment is
“in conflict with medical ethics and potentially unlawful”.
My third question is: how reliable is the procedure? As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has mentioned, the British Dental Association does not like it at all. It believes that assessment using X-rays is inaccurate and unethical, and, as the noble Baroness mentioned, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the BMA and the BASW all share that concern. As the noble Baroness also said, the Government themselves are aware, and admit, that the science is inaccurate. In their evidence to the committee explaining why they are not using the draconian automaticity procedures in Section 58 of this year’s Illegal Migration Act but are instead using the provisions in last year’s Bill, with the negative inference provision, they say that the
procedure is not sufficiently accurate to permit using the 2023 Act. If that is so, how can it be accurate enough for using the 2022 Act, with the negative inference result detrimental to the interest of the refugee?
My last question is: who is to be responsible for carrying out this procedure? Last week, there was some alarm among local authorities when the Minister for Immigration seemed to suggest that the responsibility would fall to them. Who is to be in charge and if it is the Department of Health and the NHS, are they relaxed about the extra workload coming their way? An impact assessment might have looked into that.
The Government should shelve the regulations until they can: tell us how they are to work; conduct a proper public consultation; provide a normal impact assessment in advance; and answer our questions. I should have said at the outset that I used to be a trustee of the Refugee Council but I mention that now. Of course, I strongly support the regret amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.