My Lords, I offer very strong Green group support for this amendment, although I acknowledge the questions about whether it might be easier just to throw
the whole thing out. It is a great honour to follow three such powerful speeches from such distinguished campaigners.
I want to pick up one point in the proposed new paragraph (c) on the experience of LBGTQIA+ people. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, I am drawing on the very important briefing from Rainbow Migration. In that is the story of Samir, a gay man from Kosovo. We are obviously talking about someone who sought asylum some years ago. He knew that there was no way that he could live openly as a gay man in Kosovo at that time and, even now, it is recognised as an incredibly dangerous place for LBGTQIA+ people. Samir said:
“I felt like every day I had to look over my shoulder because you never knew what could happen.”
Samir was attacked. He came here under a different visa category. He did not know that he could apply for asylum, but he eventually found his way through the system. Then he spoke about the experience of talking. He said:
“It was the first time talking about my sexuality ... just saying aloud the word gay in Albanian, it was very surreal. I knew that although I was scared, this was my only chance”.
I ran through that story because in the previous group the Minister said that there will be guidance that “without delay” might allow for circumstances such as this. I want to point the Minister—and if she has not seen it, I would be very happy to share it with her—to another report from Rainbow Migration, Still Falling Short, that talks about how difficult it still is for LGBTQIA+ people to prove their sexual orientation or gender identity to the Home Office. If people are finding it very difficult to “prove”, how difficult is it going to be to get this consideration the Minister referred to before?
I want to make one other brief point that draws on a briefing from the Law Society. It would perhaps be an additional clause to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. The Law Society points out that often people will not talk about what has happened to them because they fear what might happen to family or associates back in the country that they have fled. That is something we really have to consider. If you have been subject to persecution, you almost invariably will know people still who will be in grave danger if you tell the story and the story gets out. There really should also be consideration of that in the guidance.