UK Borders Bill

I am sure that all of us want to pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate for the profound and moving way in which he introduced his amendment. I should say at the outset that my amendment is not as comprehensive as his, but obviously I completely endorse and support everything that he said in putting forward his amendment. From time to time in this Committee, I have brought messages from the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Perhaps I could do so again in support of the right reverend Prelate and in support of my own amendment. It is interesting that the committee started what it had to say by doing exactly what the right reverend Prelate did—that is, to welcome the clause in so far as it goes. However, we continued to have great anxieties. In our report, we drew attention to the fact that, in our recent report on the treatment of asylum seekers, we had been persuaded by the evidence that, whatever their intentions, the Government had been practising what was, in effect, a deliberate policy of destitution in relation to asylum seekers and that such deliberate use of inhumane treatment was obviously unacceptable. Refused asylum seekers pursuing an appeal receive no support as the law is currently interpreted. The committee therefore welcomed the fact that, like us, the Government had come to the conclusion that such destitution was unacceptable. However, we made a number of recommendations for legislative changes at the earliest opportunity to end the deliberate use of destitution as an instrument of policy. The committee believed that the present provided just such an opportunity to implement some of our proposals—and they are there in our report. We therefore recommended that to reduce the risk of asylum seekers being subjected to inhumane treatment contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and to ensure that they are treated with common humanity, as the common law requires, the Bill should be amended to provide for this. I believe that our amendments seek to achieve that purpose and, in proposing my own, I warmly endorse what the right reverend Prelate said.