UK Borders Bill

I support Amendment No. 63 to which I have added my name. I thank both UNICEF UK and ECPAT UK for their thorough briefing on trafficking to which I have had recourse throughout our debates on the Bill, and with regard to child welfare generally. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, is right to ask the Government to put on the record how they are improving the way in which they gather information on the detention of children in the UK. My noble friend Lady Carnegy is right to reinforce the point that we need clarity of information. It is only on that that one can base proper developments and policy. I hope that when the Minister replies on Amendment No. 63, in particular, he will not simply go down the usual route of saying that the amendment, if put in the Bill, would lead to a lot of bureaucracy. As the noble Earl pointed out, the purpose of the amendment is to probe. It is important to know what mechanisms the Government have already put in place to gather such information and how reliable it is. From the contributions of noble Lords so far, one assumes that it cannot be very reliable at all. We have heard many stories over the past year of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate losing files, misfiling them and failing to asses them accurately. We need to know how and why matters will improve with the change of the old IND into the new BIA. I have read the safeguarding framework which the BIA has circulated in draft form. It states that the agency will, "““be alert to child safeguarding issues (including child-specific persecution and child trafficking) as a result of information collected or known about the child and his circumstances””," and, "““endeavour to establish a child’s identity (including age) and nationality””." That information would be reported under the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. How will the agency ensure that it is properly reported in a timely manner? Timeliness is vital if a child’s safety is to be secured, particularly if the agency is to achieve another of the objectives in its draft list, which is to refer information relating to child safeguarding issues quickly, carefully and lawfully to appropriate parties and those organisations with a statutory duty to safeguard children. Therefore, I am very pleased that the noble Earl tabled this amendment. I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on Amendment No. 60. There are indeed occasions on which one needs to use detention for the welfare of the person involved. He made a sensitive contribution on that point. All Members of the Committee want the detention of children to be as brief as possible, but we must recognise that there are circumstances in which it must be right for the individual and the security of the country. At first reading I have a lot of sympathy with Amendment No. 64; the difficulty, as ever, is in the detail. It tries to ensure that the best interests of a child are pursued. I certainly realise the difficulties that the Government would have in accepting that amendment, particularly with regard to subsection (1)(c) of its proposed new clause, which might override the interests of national security considerations. Members of the Committee referred to the importance of sorting out the child welfare problem that runs throughout this Bill. We had a very full debate on the first or second day in Committee, which seems a long while ago, when we properly drew attention to the importance of ensuring that there is a duty on the agency to protect children and to promote their welfare. These amendments could have been debated then because they have the same objective at heart. When we first debated my amendment on child welfare, the Minister made it clear that he was very open to negotiations and discussions during the summer so that we might achieve a common result and something could be included in the Bill to serve that purpose. There is a long way to go before we find commonality on that. With other noble Lords, I shall meet representatives of the Refugee Children’s Consortium tomorrow morning to discuss the next step. I assure the Minister that they and we will report back separately to the Government. We are keen to negotiate to solve the problem that all of us want to solve, although getting there will be a problem.