My Lords, it is an enormous pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton. I declare an interest as a former and retired Home Office lawyer and therefore there is a small pension that is being administered by some private company. The important point about that declaration is that when I was a Home Office lawyer in the 1990s, working on matters that included asylum, there was a moment when a particular failed asylum seeker who was removed was shot on arrival in their home country.
I make that point because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, has made the detailed, forensic point so clearly, but as we move into this part of the Bill and start considering non-suspensive appeals, interim relief and what should happen to someone while there is a dispute about the safety of the place to which they are being sent, that is the story that hangs in my mind, and that is really the best contribution that I can make
to the Committee’s thinking when we think about non-suspensive and suspensive appeals, and when we think in due course about my own group of amendments, which is about interim relief from domestic courts and international courts.
To facilitate the swift progress of the Committee I will do something that seems counterintuitive. The Government Chief Whip, who is returning to her place, gave us some very good advice about the Committee not liking reading. Which day was that on exactly? Was it Wednesday or Thursday? Was it this year or last year? I understand that point but this is not a filibuster; this is a very short, pithy quote from the JCHR report, which makes the point better than I could about what is wrong with the particular provisions dealt with in this group.
Noble Lords will find the quote on page 105 of the blockbuster JCHR report, which we will not all be able to read in its totality. Paragraph 333 says:
“Making human rights claims ‘non-suspensive’”—
non-suspensive means that you can appeal from the place you say are not safe in; it is perhaps not the place you say you will be shot but the place you might be sent to where you will be shot or otherwise persecuted—
“can only be consistent with our human rights obligations if pursuing those claims from the destination state is viable”.
This is from the JCHR, which is an all-party committee of both Houses. It continues:
“We are concerned that this has not been established for the states deemed safe for removals”.
That was one of the many excellent points made by the noble and learned Lord. It goes on:
“The threshold required to establish a suspensive claim based on serious harm under the Bill, and the requirement for ‘compelling evidence’ to support it”—
for those desperate refugees—
“puts at risk of removal those who have genuine human rights reasons why they should not be removed. Furthermore, allowing the Secretary of State to redefine ‘serious and irreversible harm’ by regulations opens up the possibility of increasing disparity between the protections against refoulement in domestic law and those to which the UK is committed in international law, including”—
the Minister’s favourite—
“the ECHR. We urge the Government to reconsider its decision to make human rights claims non-suspensive, and the extremely high threshold imposed to establish serious harm suspensive claims. The meaning of ‘serious and irreversible harm’ should not be open to amendment by regulations. Clause 39 should be removed from the Bill”.