UK Borders Bill

I spoke in favour of the amendment in a sense when I spoke to the last group of amendments on a previous occasion. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, knows that I support it, and the Joint Committee on Human Rights made it one of its very strong arguments. I have two points to make. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, made a connection with international development. I would so like the Home Office and the Department for International Development to have some common cause in future. The noble Lord’s point is such a good one. This really is about joined-up government. I refer particularly to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ resettlement quota, which the Minister may remember I mentioned before. We are very behind other countries, and this is another very good example of development going hand in hand with asylum. I have only one other point—to pick up a point that the Minister made toward the end of the last group of amendments. He made quite a lot of the advantages of Section 4 hard-case support. My figures, based on the statistics from the last quarter of 2006, show that 6,555 cases received Section 4 support, which is only 2 per cent of refused asylum seekers in the UK. So it is no great panacea to refer to that section. As we all know, most of the so-called refused asylum seekers—I really object to that term coming from a Government—will be supported by friends and members of their own community as well as mainstream charities.