My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 83 and 88, which I have co-signed, and Amendment 96, but there are some other superb amendments. I am not a lawyer—I am not going to apologise for that because I have had an interesting life— but I did get a lawyer to look at this for me; not yet a QC, but obviously it is a possibility. Their thoughts were that these evidence notices treat asylum seekers like criminals—in fact, worse than criminals; they treat asylum seekers as if they were dreadful criminals.
In a criminal case, late evidence might be treated as less compelling than if it had been raised earlier on, but evidence is evidence, and if evidence demonstrates a fact, then that is a fact. Facts do not care about your timescales. Rather than allowing a tribunal to determine how much weight to give the evidence, Clause 25 forces
them to give minimal weight if the evidence is supposedly late. Even if it were the most compelling evidence, a tribunal would be forced to give it minimal weight. That really cannot be right; it is not justice. I cannot believe the Minister will stand up—in a few moments, we hope—and say that this is justice. This is an artificial exercise. It is not founded in justice. It is a purely political venture to make it harder and harder for people to claim asylum, and to make it easier for them to be deported. It must be stopped.