My Lords, I have Amendment 57 in this group, and also the clause stand part debate. I will address my Amendment 57 first, but there are serious matters in the clause as a whole which I will come back to in a moment.
Amendment 57 addresses the far-reaching and perhaps unrealistic legal obligations being placed on private actors and companies to effect removal. This includes the captain of a ship, the pilot of an aircraft, the train manager or the train driver being required to enforce removal of an individual by enforcing detention on the ship, aircraft or train, if required, to prevent disembarking before removal has been fulfilled—and also of course to do it the other way round, as these people are mandated to ensure that the person is taken by those means of transport to the country to which they are being deported.
Two things arise from this part of the clause. One is that it gives inordinate powers to the Secretary of State to requisition not just ships, boats, aeroplanes and whatever else but the services of those who run those means of transport to detain and restrain those who are being transported. I will address in a moment the criminalisation of those people in making them subject to this sort of regulation.
The Explanatory Memorandum says that the Government will procure those services by privately chartering planes or ships or whatever but, clearly, this part of the clause, as drafted, gives the power to the Government to requisition those services. The Explanatory Memorandum also says that the Government can requisition scheduled services—scheduled flights to Kigali, perhaps. There are no direct flights from the United Kingdom to Kigali, by the way, and the flights are all operated by airlines based mostly in the European Union. So the Secretary of State can intervene in scheduled flights and require that they take the asylum seeker to a destination.
The other problem is that clearly, there has been no consultation on this matter with those who are now going to be required by the Government to execute this role on their behalf. To emphasise that, I will read to the Committee the views of the UK Chamber of Shipping, the people whose vessels are likely to be requisitioned:
“We are greatly concerned about these clauses becoming law which could require the ship’s master and crew to detain passengers, something which they are not trained to do, at the direction of the Government. The clauses also seem to allow the Secretary of State to set the period for which a ship’s master is required to detain a person on board a vessel—this could potentially lead to a situation where a ship’s crew is stuck in port for an indeterminate amount of time having received an instruction to detain individuals who are then awaiting the outcome of various legal processes to determine their rights. We are concerned that this puts seafarers at much greater risk from positions of conflict and potential harm”.
That is from the chamber of shipping, which obviously has not been consulted. We have also received a letter from the RMT that makes the same points.
The issue here now is: why has this power been taken? The situation is very similar to that in the Nationality and Borders Bill, which, Members of the Committee will remember, would also have criminalised seafarers who perform humanitarian rescues of persons in distress at sea and bring them to the UK, but those provisions were dropped from that Bill because these people should not be criminalised in this manner.
My first question to the Minister is: if it was determined and agreed by Parliament that this sort of clause was not required for the Nationality and Borders Bill, what is different now? How are the circumstances different? Is it because there are many people—airline pilots or crew, perhaps—who have not been willing to deport people in the manner the Government propose? Secondly, is it because the Government are not intending to provide anyone to accompany these people on their journey but are expecting them to be dealt with entirely by the crews of existing means of transport?
It is beyond my ability to understand why this law is now being put in place when it was previously deleted from an Act that had some of the same intentions. It seems to me that this is an unworkable section of the Bill, particularly in respect of people’s understanding of how they are to be expected to carry out jobs for which they have received no training, in which they have no experience and which they may find morally repugnant.
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The second issue relates to what happens in respect of legal aid or support. My noble friend Lady Hamwee raised this issue but I want to take it a step further in terms of the process when a person arrives in the United Kingdom. I will give one example and one generality. The first stage is to understand at what point the letter or instruction of inadmissibility—whatever format it will take—is given to the person concerned. Also, who is going to give it to them and in what languages will it be given? There is no point in people being told this in English when their first language has no connection with ours. This situation, people being given information of which they have no understanding, has been criticised before.
I would like to ask a question about a case. Take a young lady who has escaped from South Sudan out of fear and gone to Kenya. She then takes a flight from Kenya to the United Kingdom; there are such direct flights. According to Schedule 1, Kenya is not a place that is safe for women. If that is the purpose of the schedule and the Government say that it is not safe to send women to Kenya, then Kenya is not a safe country. Therefore, the third condition under Clause 2 does not apply because the person has not come from a safe country. Perhaps the Minister would like to explain when he will reverse this situation. He has the schedule in front of him; that obviously must make it work. On the question of when people get advice, would that young lady coming from South Sudan via Kenya directly to the United Kingdom be able to get immediate advice, as she will obviously be seeking asylum in this country?
The other issue we face is people who are inadmissible on the other side. They will also need some advice and support regarding whether they should make a substantive claim. The timescale we are given in this Bill is very
short indeed: eight days. Does that eight-day period start from the date on which people are given their statement of inadmissibility to the country, or when they are given a notice of deportation and removal from this country? When does that period start and when will they be able to get that aid? At the moment, it is unclear from this legislation at what point they will be able to get assistance.
We have here a selection of cases to which we do not know the answers. It is not clear from the legislation before us what the answers are but, clearly, there are people who will need assistance and advice, whether regarding the language used or the quality of the notices provided to them. How that advice is to be provided and who is to provide it are important pieces of information, but the clear message I am asking the Minister to give us today is this: when will those people have access to the sort of assistance we need to provide to comply with the legislation? Also, will the eight-day rule be shortened if notice is given too late, the date of inadmissibility being some days after they arrive?