My Lords, the amendments in this group highlight the cruel reality of this policy for some of the most vulnerable people in the world. What we need is an asylum process that identifies risks and vulnerabilities and then makes a decision on them when people are here.
We know very well that there are people in this country, including Afghans, who are on a waiting list to have their cases heard. People whose age has yet to be determined should not be sent to Rwanda while they are yet to be confirmed as a child. The Government have agreed that it is wrong to send unaccompanied children to Rwanda. So, if that is the case, they need to be extremely careful that they do not do that inadvertently. Children are not cargo that can be shipped from one country to another if the Government later decide they have made a mistake and someone is in fact a child after all.
Data collected by the Helen Bamber Foundation in 2022 found that, of 1,386 children who were initially assessed as adults by the Home Office, 867—that is, 63%—ended up being assessed as children by local authorities. That is the size of the error range that we have to be careful about. The key here is not adults being wrongly assessed as children, but children being wrongly treated as adults and therefore not being safe- guarded appropriately.
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The prospect of victims of modern slavery being sent to Rwanda is again deeply disturbing. These are people who often had no choice about coming to the UK. It follows, therefore, that any level of deterrent directed at them, rather than the criminals who brought them here, is wrong. Reducing the rights and protections of victims of modern slavery increases the power the criminals have over them. The amendment we are discussing now shows that the Bill was never about saving lives; it is about trying to save the Government’s policy, which it never will. That is why these amendments are so crucial.
I ask the Minister: what information do the Government find and get from people who have been coming to this country since 20 July 2023, after the Illegal Migration Act received Royal Assent? What information is provided and sought by the Home Office? There are some, we hear, who think that their
case for having an asylum hearing is being progressed. There are people who are asked the sorts of questions that would lead them to believe that their asylum process is being progressed. Could the Minister tell us precisely what the Home Office finds out in order to be able to determine whether people are young people—children—or whether they are victims of modern slavery or Afghans seeking our support?
We do not know what we are asking of these people and how questions are being put to them, whether they are given long interviews, whether they have access to a lawyer—all that sort of information. It means that we do not understand, at the same time as we are being told that all this policy will be put in place by the Bill—and I fear that we will still be waiting. In terms of the Afghans, having a promise to look at something in a few months’ time is not the sort of immediacy we need to deal with this problem, which we need to deal with right now.
So these amendments are critical for these three groups of very vulnerable people, and we would be mistaken if we did not agree them if noble Lords press them to a vote.