My Lords, I want to comment on the speech made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford just now. She made a very important point which the Committee should take note of. She said that the amount of work that went into the programme to deal with people fleeing Ukraine was significant and she praised that. She understood from her experience the amount of effort that the Home Office made in that particular case.
5 pm
I would like the Committee to understand that this Bill and all that surrounds it—as it is merely part of a package—is a serious attempt to answer a serious problem. It is not a problem which is faced just by the United Kingdom. I was a member of the European Affairs Committee several years ago when we were looking at the traffic coming across the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy. The European Union had and still has a programme called Operation Sophia designed to stop ships coming across the Mediterranean in that way and to deal with them when they come to Italy, Lampedusa or Sicily. Similarly, the European Union has a plan dealing with people coming from Turkey to Greece, and the Spanish Government have dealings with the Moroccan Government.
Earlier than that, the Australian Government had, I think, the first example of this problem of boats arriving with immigrants out of the blue in 2001. It was evident that people were coming across from Papua New Guinea to the northern shores of Queensland illegally, and the then Liberal Government of Australia put in hand a programme very similar to the one the Government are setting out here, which has been successful. It deterred people coming from Papua New Guinea, mainly people from Asia—India, Bangladesh and so forth. It worked, so there is precedent for success in this area, however sceptical the Committee may be
about this example. I acknowledge that the United Kingdom situation is geographically and legally very different from that of Australia—I fully accept all that —but it has been a success in one area of the world in dealing with this particularly difficult problem.
While I understand the general tenor of opinion in the Committee, which has been obvious so far, I do not want the Committee to think that this is other than a committed and understandable effort to resolve a difficult problem. Given what happened in the other Chamber, where there was a considerable majority for the Bill, I do not want the House of Lords to tie the hands of the Government unduly in dealing with this novel and difficult problem.