UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 27A: 27A: Clause 16, page 9, line 27, leave out from ““State”” to end of line 28 and insert ““where there is evidence that establishes on a serious basis that he is likely to abscond and that such a condition is necessary in the interests of public order, public safety, national security or for the prevention of crime; and (v) a condition requiring him to reside at a specified address wherever there is evidence that establishes on a serious basis that he is likely to abscond and that such a condition is necessary in the interests of public order, public safety, national security or for the prevention of crime.”” The noble Lord said: This amendment is the first to the clauses that deal with treatment of claimants. We are covering here the additional restrictions that are potentially to be imposed on everybody with a limited leave to remain—conditions that are far more intrusive than the provisions of the 1971 Act, which has served the purpose all these years. The reporting and residence conditions that may be applied now under Section 3(1)(c) of the 1971 Act are a prohibition on employment, no recourse to public funds, and reporting to the police. The clause provides that, in addition to reporting to the police, a person with limited leave to remain must also report to an immigration officer or to anyone else employed by the BIA. That is what the expression ““Secretary of State”” actually means, as the Public Bill Committee was told. It also allows the BIA to specify an address at which the person concerned has to reside. In another place, when the then Minister, Joan Ryan, was challenged on the breadth of the clause, she said that it was intended to apply to only two groups of persons. Maybe the Minister will confirm what she said—that it was designed for foreign national prisoners who could not be removed at the end of their sentences for legal reasons and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, but not for every person in either category. Joan Ryan told the Public Bill Committee that there would be tens rather than hundreds of foreign national prisoners, somewhat fewer than the 1,960 UASC granted discretion and leave to remain in 2005. One would expect that the number of UASC arriving at our ports of entry would be going down, since visas are now required from practically every country outside the EEA. It would be interesting if the Minister could say something about the manner in which 270 UASC from Afghanistan and 80 from Iran, who applied in the first quarter of 2007, managed to get here in the first place. I noted that in the overwhelming majority of the UASC from those two countries, the applications were made in-country and not at a port. Therefore, those children entered either clandestinely or in some other capacity, and we ought to be told how that is happening. Are the UASC entering the UK from other EU countries? How many of the 810 UASC who applied in quarter one could be identified as Dublin convention cases? We have none of that information; it is not given in the quarterly asylum statistics. That is particularly unfortunate when we have to discuss legislation concerning UASC. It would have been useful if a certain research department at the Home Office had made a special effort to provide us with comprehensive information about the UASC so that we would have had it before us when considering these clauses. I suggest that we ought to keep a particularly close eye on UASC because of the risk of trafficking, which we discussed only a couple of weeks ago in your Lordships’ House. The global visa regulations, which were mentioned in that debate, are supposed to ensure that children who are subject to entry clearance are recorded as they enter on what is called a ““vignette””. I hope that will reduce the number of children brought in as domestics and then forced into prostitution, examples of which are given in the UK action plan on human trafficking. Have the global visa regulations and the establishment of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre had any effect on the disappearance of children who were in the custody of local authorities? That has preoccupied noble Lords on a number of occasions in debates in the House. Why is it now considered necessary for children to report to BIA officials as well as to the police, when the local authority is already responsible for their care? Why is it less likely that they will disappear, whether of their own volition or under the compulsion of traffickers, if they live at an address specified by the BIA rather than one that is decided for them by the local authority? With regard to the foreign criminals who cannot be deported at the end of their sentence, it would be useful to hear more from the Minister about the nature of the problem. There have been difficulties in the past concerning prisoners’ documentation, and if it is the intention to use the clause to release a prisoner at the end of his sentence to a specified address with narrow reporting conditions, rather than continuing to detain him either in prison or in an immigration removal centre, that would be welcome. However, if Clause 16 is aimed at those prisoners and what one hopes is a diminishing number of UASC who are not qualified under the refugee convention, why is the clause not limited to those two categories? The Government may have in mind a third category, those designated as having a special immigration status, introduced by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. These are foreign criminals within a more extensive definition than the one in Clause 31 of this Bill, as well as their spouses and children. If those foreign criminals, who may have been convicted of relatively minor offences, cannot be deported because of Section 6 of the Human Rights Act, they will come under the new status. I understand that the Government have said that people designated under Clause 115 of the new Bill form another category to which Clause 16 here is intended to apply. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that. We will seek to avoid the confusion that would otherwise be caused by two different definitions of ““foreign criminal”” when we get to Clause 31. Meanwhile, though, I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that under Clause 117(2) of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill the second kind of foreign criminal is not to be deemed to have been given leave to enter the United Kingdom, whereas in Clause 16 of the UK Borders Bill the additional conditions are expressly attached to leave to enter. I would be grateful if the Minister would explain how that inconsistency is to be resolved, if indeed it is intended to apply Clause16 to those foreign prisoners. In any case, whether or not there is to be a third category subject to Clause 16, we believe that the Government should not have the power to impose these additional conditions on anyone with limited leave to remain. We also believe that, within the categories identified as being subject to the conditions, it should be demonstrated that for each individual designated there are weighty reasons, as set out in Amendment No. 27A, for the imposition of a residence condition. We also say that, if the two conditions are to be added to Section 3 of the 1971 Act, they should be applied only in a manner consistent with the ECHR, the ICCPR and the refugee convention. The then Minister in another place, Joan Ryan, touched very briefly on the human rights implications of this clause when she dismissed the suggestion by Liberty that residence conditions might breach Article 8 on the right to family life and Article 11 on freedom of association. She pointed out, correctly, that both those articles may be subject to limitations which are necessary in a democratic society and proportionate to the legitimate aim being pursued. It is also true that the maintenance of effective immigration control is a legitimate aim, but that does not mean that all and every infraction of Articles 8 and 11 with a view to better control of immigration are proportionate. That would have to be settled by a case at the European Court, and we should like it to be recognised in the Bill that, whatever residence restrictions are to be imposed under Clause 16, it remains to be established that they are indeed proportionate. The United Kingdom is of course a party to the ICCPR and periodically we are examined before the UN Human Rights Committee, which is responsible for its implementation. The reference to the ICCPR in Amendment No. 30A emphasises that we shall be accountable to that committee for the way in which the power in new Section 3(1)(c)(v) is exercised. I beg to move.