UK Borders Bill

My Lords, the most important thing that the Minister said was that the convention allows us to have restrictions on immigration in accordance with the law. I suggest that the best way forward now would be for the Government to take up with the committee, when the opportunity arises, as it will do shortly, the general question of whether the restrictions are of the type imposed by every European country. The noble Lord’s list included Andorra and Monaco, but that list may be considered slightly less impressive than the one that I gave, which includes a large number of countries in Europe or countries from which European immigrants have formed the majority in the past, such as Australia and Canada. Those countries, many of which have large numbers of immigrants, have no difficulty in managing their immigration systems without the reservation that we insert. That may be because they are satisfied that the laws that they have enacted do not contravene any of the provisions of the convention. There is perhaps a general subject for discussion between these states and the Committee on the Rights of the Child to define in what way states may legitimately protect their borders through the sort of legislation that we have here without violating their obligations under the convention. If there were a declaratory statement by the committee permitting certain kinds of legislation, we would be able to withdraw the reservation. I come back to the point with which I started. We are not objecting to the Government having controls on legislation. We are saying that the Convention on the Rights of the Child should apply to the treatment of children within the immigration system. I refer particularly to detention centres, where clearly there have been regular breaches of the convention. Unfortunately we do not have time to pursue this further tonight; I am sorry that it came up last thing in our debate when not many noble Lords were here to take part in the discussion. I hope that the Government will consider carefully what I said about discussions with the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which may be the best way of pursuing the issue offline. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.