My Lords, in moving Amendment 106 in the name of, and at the invitation of, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I will speak also to Amendments 109 and 110.
If Clause 36 is not amended or deleted, it will contradict Article 31 of the refugee convention. It seeks to punish or penalise a refugee for arriving in the
UK to make an asylum claim by a route that took them through other countries. The requirement in the refugee convention to come directly was intended only to prevent a person who had acquired refugee status and protection in one country deciding to switch to another. Excluding a person from asylum in the UK simply because they stopped in France, Germany or Belgium, perhaps for a night’s rest, is completely unreasonable. The UK courts have confirmed that any merely short-term stopover en route to an intended sanctuary cannot forfeit the protection of Article 31 of the convention.
Any other interpretation, as the Government seek to impose in Clause 36, means, as in so much of this Bill, a shirking of the sharing of international responsibilities, such that looking after refugees falls overwhelmingly on countries neighbouring the countries of conflict from which the person is seeking to escape. Therefore, Amendment 106 would at least amend the clause, which, however, we might find later, needs to be deleted. I beg to move.