Mr Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat)

Some important issues remain as we enter the last lap of today's sitting. The amendments are significant.

Amendment No. 283 would extend the definition of an asylum claim to include article 3 of the European convention on human rights on protection against torture and other forms of inhuman treatment. We sought to include that, as it appears to be accepted elsewhere in the Bill as part of the definition of a refugee. It would be simpler to have one straightforward set of protections against removal, rather than to have an individual who was threatened with removal taking an ECHR claim through the courts under the Human Rights Act 1998, as was suggested. That would be less satisfactory than an explicit statement in the Bill that the ECHR and asylum provisions protect equally against removal.

The other amendments would overturn the clause, which appears to contain its own work-around subsections. It sets itself up as a clause that protects individuals from removal while their claims for asylum are pending. However, subsection (4) contains large exemptions whereby the Secretary of State can effect removals almost in any way that he wants. The clause is not clear: it grants protection while granting ill-defined exemptions. We are trying to remove those ill-defined exemptions by defining them more clearly. I hope that the Minister will say what those exemption subsections mean. I also hope that she will give some thought to the ECHR provision, which would be better incorporated in the protection that the clause provides, rather than left as a separate legal process that would always be available, but would be unnecessary and cumbersome.

See this speech in context