UK Borders Bill

I am most grateful to all those who have taken part in this debate which, the Minister will agree, has been entirely one-sided, because there have been seven speeches against the Government’s position and only the Minister’s for it. We have tried to help him. My noble friend Lord Dholakia made the excellent suggestion that we should know what is in the code of guidance, because at least it would limit the damage caused by the Government’s decision to apply Section 9 on a discretionary basis to individual cases. It is repugnant to me that a social worker should be put in the position of having to do that. Whatever the circumstances are, he is going to have virtually a power of life and death over a particular family, which may have been recalcitrant or may have been obstinate in resisting attempts by the Government to persuade it to go back voluntarily. They have always got the power of compulsory removal; nothing was said about that. Why should we exercise the power of making someone destitute when there are plenty of provisions in the statute book, throughout the immigration Acts, for removing people compulsorily? The Minister did not respond to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, who said that only 6,500 so-called failed asylum seekers received emergency support, and that was 2 per cent of the total. Already, 98 per cent of people are being cut off at the end of the process, and anyone who has met these people will know how difficult it is for them. I was talking on Sunday to a failed asylum seeker who is a citizen of Nepal. He is going to depart voluntarily, and the Home Office knows that perfectly well. He has been in negotiation with the International Organisation for Migration with a view to helping him depart for Hong Kong, where he has a job offer. It is a matter of sorting out, first, the renewal of his Nepalese passport, which has expired since he has been here and, secondly, getting the visa on the passport, which has been promised him by the Hong Kong authorities. In the meanwhile, even though he has a wife and child, he is depending on a cousin’s support, and he is totally without means of his own. There is no support for him. Are we going to say that every failed asylum seeker, as he is, is to be put in the position of depending on cousins or, even worse, of sleeping on the streets, such as in the case of Janipher Maseko, which I quoted earlier? The noble Lord may raise his eyebrows and look aggrieved, but the fact is that there are thousands of these people already.