UK Borders Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is referring to when the then right honourable and later my noble friend Lord Whitelaw abandoned a particular method of assessing age. I appreciate that in that time there have been significant changes in technology, and I anticipate that the Minister will repeat what we have been told at Question Time and on the Floor of the House on occasions; namely, that the methods are safer and more accurate in their assessments. I have some difficulty with the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, because the way in which it is drafted did not give us the opportunity to consider what he was going to propose in his speech as alternative methods. He simply abolishes something. He did not point us in the direction of what might come in as an alternative. I am very interested in his proposals and wish to consider what he has said between now and Report. We have to look very carefully at what the noble Lord has said. We must have procedures for age assessment. They have to be robust, safe, human-rights compliant and proportionate. Above all, they must ensure that those who seek to come here by pretending that they are not the age they say are screened out. It is not fair on children who wish to come here, if the system is abused. I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, or the Minister, can assist me in saying what the practice and procedure is elsewhere in the EU, and whether there is any proven practice that appears to be more successful than ours. Certainly, I am aware that there is a great advantage for those who claim to be younger than they are if they come here and successfully gain the right to remain. One has to be aware of the reality. We must not seek to introduce systems that will unfairly benefit those who should not be here. We must ensure that children whom we would wish to enable to have the right to be here are not put in a position of being treated in a way that is injurious to their health, and we must not find that the system does not work. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister about advances in technology because in the past those arguments have been very persuasive.