UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 58: 58: Clause 32, page 17, line 6, leave out ““conviction”” and insert ““the offence”” The noble Lord said: I am immensely grateful to Save the Children Fund for having alerted me to the significance of this matter and for having argued its case with me so well. I am so impressed that there is a basic injustice here that I felt that I had no alternative but to table an amendment and share my concern with the Committee in the hope that the Minister would share that concern and, in the light of what I said previously, seek a way in which to respond. Clause 31(2) and (3) mean that mandatory deportation would apply to those who have committed a less serious offence. The person would have had to have been sentenced to at least 12 months’ imprisonment or would have had to have committed an offence covered by the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (Specification of Particularly Serious Crimes) Order 2004. Crimes such as immigration offences, including entering the UK without a passport, would also be included. Surely we all realise that, for a child fleeing persecution—it is not always a child—entering the UK without a passport or with a false passport might be the only way out of a dangerous environment. Yet this might be difficult to prove. Other offences that would also be included in this provision are fly tipping and possessing cannabis for personal use. It is particularly worrying, given the wide range of offences concerned, that Clause 32 provides for the automatic deportation of a person who committed an offence when he was a child. Clause 32 lists a number of exceptions where the Secretary of State may not make a deportation order. However, the second exception, in Clause 32(3), provides for an exemption from Clauses 31 to 38 only if the person is under 18 when he was convicted. This means—here we come to the rub of what seems to be a disturbing injustice—that someone who commits an offence when they are under 18 but who is not convicted until after their 18th birthday would be eligible for automatic deportation under these new proposals. The comments made by the Minister in Committee in the other place are certainly to be welcomed. He said: "““If we are deporting children, we need to be satisfied that there are adequate protections in place in order to avoid deporting a vulnerable person””," and that the Government have, "““obligations to children that merit case-by-case consideration””. —[Official Report, Commons UK Borders Bill Committee, 20/3/07; col. 446.]" Those observations are to be welcomed. Save the Children and others recognise that the Government seek to address their obligations through exception 2. However, as the clause stands, they will not fulfil their obligations. It is likely to give protection only to younger children and will not guarantee protection to those aged 16 or over, given the likelihood of their reaching their 18th birthday before they are convicted. I have been made aware that the Minister in another place said that it may be difficult to pin down the date of an offence and that the point of conviction provides clarity and certainty. However, other legislation refers to the age at which an offence was committed. For example, Section 229 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 uses the age at which an offence was committed to determine whether to take previous offences into account when sentencing. If the Government have included such a proviso in their previous legislation, why cannot they include a similar clause in this Bill? Save the Children gave an interesting illustration of the implications of this measure. A vulnerable 17 year-old girl is smuggled into the UK, six months before her 18th birthday and is subsequently convicted, under Section 2 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, of entering the United Kingdom without a passport. She receives a 12-month custodial sentence. However, before she is convicted, she turns 18 and becomes eligible for automatic deportation. Had she turned 18 after being convicted, she would not have been eligible for automatic deportation. This amendment seeks to remedy what seems to me to be a clear injustice. I beg to move.