Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

moved Amendment No. 53:"Page 13, line 40, leave out ““(d) or””" The noble Lord said: There are several amendments. Perhaps I may disseminate the information before me. Amendments Nos. 53, 54, 56, 57A, 58 and 62 are in the names of my noble friend Lord Avebury and me. Amendments Nos. 55 and 57 are Conservative amendments with Liberal Democrat support. Amendments Nos. 59 and 61 stand in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman. At this stage, I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 53, 54, 56, 57A, 58 and 62, and allow the noble Baroness to put her case on the amendments for which, I am sorry, she cannot have our support. The purpose of our Amendments Nos. 53 and 54 is to ensure that those claiming asylum are treated in the same way as other applicants. They preserve the current position, whereby all those required to attend for fingerprinting, including those seeking asylum, are given seven days’ notice of the requirements to attend, while allowing the modification that people may be given a specific time for an appointment. The amendments are intended to raise the difficulties that may be caused to applicants by giving them only three days’ notice running from the date given in the notice as the date of issue, which could easily take more than three days before it reaches the applicant. The people for whom it is proposed that three days, rather than seven, from the issue of the document should be the minimum notice period are those who have sought recognition as refugees or asserted that removal would break their rights under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and their dependants. The people who will get a minimum of seven days’ notice are those who have failed to produce a valid passport or identity document on arrival; people refused leave to enter but who are on temporary admission and who, it is feared, will not comply with residence conditions; and those in whose cases a decision has been made to make removal directions or to deport. The combination of a fixed date and time to attend, with very short notice periods, will lead to missed appointments and inefficiency. What will happen if a person can prove that the document did not reach him or her until after the date on which they were required to attend—for example, because it was delayed in the post? I make no reflection on our postal services here. Perhaps they were temporarily absent from their accommodation for a couple of nights and did not have the money to travel to attend. This could also happen to those given seven days’ notice if the documents were lost in the post; it is not an impossibility. The consequence of failure to attend can be arrest without warrant. Our Amendments Nos. 53 and 54 are designed to protect against those circumstances. Amendments Nos. 56 and 58 would prohibit the Secretary of State from making orders that apply generally. They provide an opportunity to probe the safeguards that will be associated with the exercise of these powers by inviting the Secretary of State to envisage a situation in which he could make an order that not only applied generally, but also complied with subsection (7), which requires that information be sought without breaching human rights. Passenger information orders under paragraph 17(2) of Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000, as amended, and the Terrorism Act 2000 (Information) Order 2002 do not include the power to make orders that apply generally. Amendment No. 57A rewrites the subsection so that instead of stating:"““The Secretary of State may make an order [under this paragraph] only if satisfied that the nature of the information sought is such that there are likely to be circumstances in which it can be required under subsection (2) without breaching Convention rights””," it would instead read:"““The Secretary of State may make an order [under this paragraph] only if satisfied that the nature of the information sought is such that it can be required under subsection (2) without breaching Convention rights””." The amendment seeks to probe the drafting of this subsection. The drafting appears to permit the Secretary of State to make an order if he can envisage circumstances in which requiring the information would not breach human rights, even if in the particular case he knows that this is not so. Amendment No. 62 would remove the power to share information with,"““any other foreign law enforcement agency””." The specific point we wish to probe is what safeguards will be in place to ensure that information is not shared in a way that breaches the UK’s obligations under the 1951 UN convention relating to the status of refugees by putting a person at risk of persecution. However, there are also concerns about the loose definition of a ““foreign law enforcement agency”” and the lack of safeguards in the clause. I beg to move.