UK Borders Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, will know what I am going to say because I have said it several times before, but he is absolutely right to keep bringing this matter before the House and, in this case, the Grand Committee. There may be occasions later when I shall not speak to an amendment because I do not consider it is my job to do the Government’s work for them and explain why it would not be right to accept an amendment. However, on this occasion, it is right that I continue to give the reason why we on these Benches cannot support the amendment. I support the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, 100 per cent in what he seeks to do. The principle should be that the guidance and good practice that is supposed to be followed by the BIA or the IND should be followed. There should not be these errors. All noble Lords will be greatly concerned to have heard the instances given today of when good practice appears to have gone out of the window in respect of those who not only have claimed torture but, it would appear, have a substantiated claim that they have undergone it. There can be no doubt that all noble Lords would wish to ensure that those who have been subjected to torture should be treated in the right way. Whether that is extended on every occasion to those who claim that they have been subjected to torture is where we enter a very difficult realm of how one can do that properly without having unintended consequences. As I have said before to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, on these occasions, I have concerns about the unintended consequences of the amendment. One could be picky and say that that does not define torture, but that goes to the core of the issue. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, was right to refer to mental health. We know that if one is subjected to torture it can have a huge adverse effect on one’s mental health. We need to know how one would define torture if an amendment such as this were put into the Bill, because the amendment has significant consequences and confers significant protections against detention. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, helpfully pointed out that some amendments might be required to make the amendment more roadworthy. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, spoke, I not only agreed with him but thought of several more ways in which the amendment would need to be tweaked. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that it would be extremely difficult to bring the amendment to the condition in which it could be put into the Bill. There has to be so much flexibility in determining how one deals with different people who claim for different reasons that they have been subject to torture. Let me give an example. On this occasion, I will do the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, the honour of giving him a different example; I shall change my grounds and give him a more up-to-date one which occurred to me after I had read a report of UNICEF UK and Amnesty. I had been looking at the conditions of people in Darfur, as have all noble Lords, and was considering the case of a member of the Janjaweed who had raped, pillaged and murdered—you name it—but came to this country under another nationality, by an indirect route, to claim asylum. He did so because he had double-crossed other members of the Janjaweed, which, of course, is fluid in the way it operates. He had double-crossed his own thuggery chief and had himself then been subjected to torture. So here was a person, a member of the Janjaweed who had perpetrated the most appalling crimes on people there, and yet had come here, masquerading as a different nationality, and claimed that he had been tortured. Consider then, if there were a case—and I do not know whether there is—of a woman in Darfur who had been raped by a member of the Janjaweed, who comes here and claims that she has been subjected to torture and should also therefore find respite under the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. As it is drafted, I would expect the amendment to treat both those people equally and exempt them from detention. I do not believe that is what the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, expects. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury.