My Lords, I have very little experience in the making of laws; unlike the noble Lord who preceded me, I am not a politician. I have even less experience of interpreting and applying our laws; I am not a lawyer or a judge. But I have a lifetime’s experience of standing with those affected by our laws, especially people in trouble, the homeless, prisoners, victims of racism, sexism, homophobia, those suffering abuse of one kind or another, the poor and the dispossessed, and refugees.
The Bill that we are discussing today is mean-minded and punitive. It fills my mind’s eye with pictures of people on the move through famine and political oppression along the migratory routes from the Horn of Africa or through war-torn territories in the Middle East, North Africa or Afghanistan. I see people in small boats risking their lives, many of them pushed back on the high seas; I see people held in grim detention centres, men and women with hope driven from their eyes, denied of their rights and doomed to live meaningless lives.
The Government bringing this Bill have such a different mindset from those who framed the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees 70 years ago. I must take issue with the Minister, who urged us not to look to the past. I am afraid that it is in the past that I find the inspiration that should be behind the framing of the proposals before us now. Led by Clement Attlee and—let us not forget—by Winston Churchill, British lawyers framed the convention and brought it into our domestic law, giving us binding, legal obligations towards all refugees under its jurisdiction. The British delegation to a conference of plenipotentiaries pleaded that the convention be enacted with generosity, that its signatories should go beyond the merely contractual and that there should be solidarity with those nations at the front line in receiving those fleeing persecution.
All this progress is now, admittedly, being steadily eroded. Across Europe, not just here, states are, in one way or another, redefining or neglecting or abandoning the obligations of the convention. This Bill is not the first indication of our present Government’s hostility
to the idea of fulfilling their duties, but it is a hammer blow, likely to seal the reputation of the United Kingdom as a xenophobic nation—the same United Kingdom that did so much to create a post-world war order based on human rights and the rule of law.
Noble Lords should read the long list of indictments in the UNHCR documentation that we have all received. In recent months, I have had extensive conversations with UNHCR officials in London, Strasbourg and Geneva. The document that they provide is relentless and scathing, so we must ask Her Majesty’s Government just what the pledges they made so recently at the United Nations General Assembly in support of the United Nations’ Global Compact on Refugees can mean because the proposals in the compact are so at odds with the proposals in this legislation. It is difficult to see what the promises made in New York will add up to if the Bill is passed in its present form.
The noble Lord and the noble Baroness who stand at the Dispatch Box—goodhearted people who have earned the respect of all of us here today—will be under the usual obligation to stand firm on the Government’s line. That is their job, and they must do it as best they can, but I appeal to those who sit behind their Ministers, people sitting on the Benches opposite—so many friends and colleagues whom I have got to know over the years—to join all of us in other parts of the House who certainly want to send heavy amendments back to the Commons. I hope that we can amend this Bill and do it with commanding majorities.
My final appeal, therefore, is to all noble and learned Lords, judges and practising or retired lawyers, all who have interpreted or applied our laws in their professional lives. I urge them to bring their skills to the task of helping the House to argue the case robustly for a more humane Act of Parliament than the present Bill would provide, one that remains faithful to the undertakings that we have made in international and domestic law. Britain’s standing in the world depends on no less.
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