My Lords, although I support all these amendments, I will speak only to Amendment 45, to which I have added my name. Once again, I thank Women for Refugee Women for its support with the amendment.
The right reverend Prelate has made the case for returning to Clause 32. I just want to pick up some points made by the Minister in Committee. He argued that it is difficult to attack the definition in Clause 32 as wrong, yet, in effect, that is what the Upper Tribunal did in the 2020 judgment referred to by the right reverend Prelate, when it confirmed that this approach to membership of a particular social group is contrary to the humanitarian objective of the refugee convention. Moreover, in Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, dismissed this approach as a grave mistake that would cause grave injustice. Was he wrong?
Having listened to his less than convincing justification of the definition in Clause 32, I ask the Minister this: does he accept that Clause 32 means that a woman fleeing gender-based violence with good grounds for being accepted as a refugee is less likely to be accepted, as the UNHCR and myriad civil society groups have warned? His answer in Committee—given loyally, if I may say so—was this:
“What it means is that a woman, like anybody else, who has a proper claim under the refugee convention will find refuge in the UK.”—[Official Report, 8/2/22; col. 1452.]
I will repeat the question and ask the Minister to give us a clear “yes” or “no” answer, given that clarity is supposed to be what this clause is all about. Does he accept that Clause 32 means that a woman fleeing gender-based violence with good grounds for being accepted as a refugee is less likely to be accepted—yes or no?
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Finally, in response to criticisms made of the equality impact assessment, the Minister promised monitoring of the clause, which is welcome. Could he please give us more information about how it will be monitored? What data will be collected, will the data be published and, if so, how frequently and starting when? Will it include statistics on the number who successfully rely on membership of a particular social group to claim refugee status, and the number of those who fail to secure such status because of their inability to fulfil the criteria? What categories will be used? For example, will survivors of gender-based abuse be included? What will the Government do if the monitoring shows that the clause is having the damaging effect that is feared? I realise that those are again questions for the Home Office, so I should be grateful if the Minister would pass them on and ask the Home Office to write to me.
In conclusion, there is a certain irony that we are debating these clauses the day after the Home Secretary launched a campaign to say “Enough” to violence against women and girls. On Monday, in her summing up on Clause 11, the Minister concluded with the words that the clause was
“fair in its acknowledgement that we absolutely must be sensitive to the vulnerabilities of certain asylum seekers.”—[Official Report, 28/2/22; col. 627.]
I fear that Clauses 31 and 32 make a mockery of such claims.