My Lords, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, is required and mandated by Parliament to scrutinise every government Bill for its compatibility with human rights. How is it expected to do that if a Home Secretary fails to come to the committee to defend and explain a Bill that she has been unable to sign off as human rights-compliant? That is discourteous and worse.
By contrast, in 2015, and with consummate skill, Theresa May steered the landmark modern-day slavery and human trafficking legislation through Parliament, providing pre-legislative scrutiny and building bipartisan and bicameral consensus and support. Last week, with my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss and the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, we spent an hour with Lady May and Sir Iain Duncan Smith. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will explain why their amendment on trafficking victims, alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, in his remarks, has not been accepted.
Let us be clear: the changes proposed in the Bill will not stop the boats, as modern slavery victims are just 6% of small boat arrivals. However, it will remove support and protection from many genuine victims, and will deter slavery victims exploited on British soil from coming forward, leaving them trapped in exploitation and making prosecuting criminal gangs even harder.
I have been a trustee of a charity that combats trafficking and yesterday chaired a session for key organisations, including the Salvation Army, which with partners have supported over 18,000 victims during the 11 years that it has held the Government’s modern slavery victim care contract. It points out that the Bill disapplies various protections and those who arrive irregularly and indirectly will be deemed a “threat to public order” and will therefore be disqualified from the existing legal protections.
The weight of evidence received by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, some of it taken in camera from victims, has been overwhelmingly clear that this would be in breach of the UK’s obligations under the Council of Europe’s convention against trafficking and Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Yesterday, at that meeting with the Salvation Army, I was told that traffickers will use the new law as a tool, and that it will not break the cycle of exploitation, only exacerbate it, adding to the trauma—to destitution,
homelessness and mental illness, and to people living outside the law in precarious uncertainty. Paradoxically, we will empower traffickers and brothel owners and disempower the victims.
The JCHR also heard concerns that Clauses 2 to 5 will ultimately lead to the UK failing to play its part in the global system of refugee protection, a theme that has been mentioned so often in the debate so far. Vicky Tennant, UK representative to the United Nations refugee agency, told the committee that the Bill is
“a series of unilateral measures that are about pushing refugees away and pushing responsibility on to other countries, it will undermine the trust and regional co-operation needed to manage these movements”.
Within the last 24 hours, the UNHCR has said that it
“breaks the core UN Conventions that UNHCR is mandated to safeguard: the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1954 Statelessness Convention”.
In addition to concerns for the victims of trafficking, there are five other areas that have raised red flags for the JCHR: first, the removal of protections for refugees and stateless persons; secondly, potential for indefinite and arbitrary detention; thirdly, due process and appeal rights being compromised; fourthly, concerns over interim measures; and fifthly, lack of protections for both accompanied and unaccompanied children—a point properly made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, whose amendment on children I seconded when it was considered and supported right across your Lordships’ House.
The JCHR heard that the Bill would not be compatible with the UK’s obligations under both the ECHR and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Two experts said the provisions
“create risks of Article 5 breaches”,
while Welsh Women’s Aid said there would inevitably be
“an increase in the number of women and children exploited in hidden and organised illegal trade”.
As far as due process and appeal rights are concerned, listen to Freedom from Torture, which told us that:
“A person may be able to provide ‘reasonable’ or even ‘strong’ evidence, but not quite enough to be ‘compelling’. Very many refugees will not be able to surmount this evidential burden, putting them at risk of harm”.
The Bill also gives Ministers legislative permission to ignore interim measures indicated by the European Court of Human Rights and to breach various international and domestic legal obligations, and risks breaching others. Several witnesses told us that the Bill is so bad it is simply incapable of amendment, and that we should first undertake post-legislative scrutiny of the Nationality and Borders Act, which came into force only in January, before legislating further.
If it proves impossible to amend the Bill in the ways that many noble Lords have argued during this debate, we should have no hesitation in using our constitutional right to defeat it at Third Reading. I agree with others that it is our duty to consider the Bill in Committee and on Report.
Let me end. In 1938 the independent MP Eleanor Rathbone established the Parliamentary Committee on Refugees. In 1940, during a six-hour debate, when Europe faced the challenge of enormous numbers of
displaced people, she argued that in addition to the humanitarian case there were hard-headed reasons for the UK to lead the international response. She said it is
“not only in the interests of humanity and of the refugees, but in the interests of security itself”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/7/1940; col. 1212.]
Her speech, and its description of dog-whistle politics and the stigmatisation of refugees, bears careful study today.
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