My Lords, one of the striking things about this interesting debate is that, in many cases, noble Lords on all sides of the Chamber have spoken as if they were proceeding from a fundamental principle of great importance to them. For some, it was the vision of what our country is; for others, it was the universal principle of humanitarianism or a commitment to internationalism as a means of resolving problems. There were others, too, of course.
My fundamental starting point is more mundane: the international legal principle that no country is obliged to admit foreign nationals and that, if one does so, it may impose conditions on that entry. Of course, we in this country mitigate that right—our right to refuse to admit foreign nationals—in ways that we have chosen to do in the past. For example, when we were members of the European Union, we gave free access to this country to citizens of EU member states. Another way in which we have abridged that international right, of course, is by entering into the refugee convention. Inevitably, these sorts of arrangements involve some sort of international agreement and so can be categorised as falling under the heading of international law.
I am not a lawyer, nor making a legal point, but we must take account, as my noble friend Lord Balfe said—he has just disappeared—of the circumstances in which we entered into those arrangements and whether those circumstances continue to apply, because we have a degree of flexibility about how we apply them in the light of changing circumstances. The circumstances in which we entered the refugee convention contemplated broadly the care of often large numbers of people displaced by war and other catastrophes, usually in adjacent countries and on a temporary basis, until they could return safely to their home. A lot of people would ask how, by means of the same convention, we are having a debate this evening about transcontinental travel facilitated by profitable travel agencies that are run as businesses—they may be criminal enterprises, but they are profitable travel agencies that are run as businesses—with a view to permanent settlement. This is a very long way indeed from where we started.
Some people may say, “The world has changed since we entered the convention, and this is what it is like now. We should share our burden”. I fully accept arguments that Britain, as a leading international power, should share burdens. There are ways in which we can share burdens; by doing things for people who are displaced, not necessarily by their coming to this country but by helping them in the places where they are displaced. We could do more on that front.
I cannot resist saying that I find it very hard to accept comments from many noble Lords about the European Convention on Human Rights when we so lightly pass over the fact that the rights of our own people in Northern Ireland to a say in the laws that they live under is abridged by the Northern Ireland protocol and by the Windsor Framework that has followed it. When it suits us, we are all for the European
Convention on Human Rights, but we are willing to blink it when it does not. There is a degree of double sightedness on that.
It is not all good news for my noble friend on the Front Bench; I have some concerns about the Bill, including that, as has been alluded to glancingly by some noble Lords, it deliberately catches some British citizens within its scope. It is possible to be a British citizen and still be an illegal migrant under the Bill, denied access to British citizenship by being an illegal migrant. That is because the drafters of the Bill—from the Home Office, I assume—as so often in the past, have deliberately conflated the concepts of naturalisation and registration. They have treated them separately, in separate clauses, but have imposed the same penalties and the same process. Not for the first time I remind noble Lords that the two things are entirely different. Naturalisation is a concession whereby the British Government gives citizenship to people of foreign nationality. Registration, introduced by the post-war Labour Government, is a process whereby the British state acknowledges an existing right to British citizenship which has been difficult to establish, either through the vagueness of circumstances or the want of proper documentation. It is akin to the sort of blunders that we fell into which led to the Windrush scandal.
The Bill needs to be amended and looked at very carefully to ensure that those entitled to British citizenship by way of registration are not denied those rights because they arrive in the country irregularly. I hope that other noble Lords will come back to this in Committee.
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