Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 5:15 pm on 27 April 2004.

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Photo of Lord Avebury Lord Avebury Shadow Minister, Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs 5:15, 27 April 2004

I am grateful to the Minister for the explanation that she has given and for drawing our attention to the provisions in Part 6 of the schedule. I had appreciated that the power to remove countries from the lists at Parts 2 and 3 existed and that that power did not extend to the Part 1 list. The whole point of the amendment was that we should treat these countries in a uniform manner.

Although I accept the Minister's argument that we are looking at a very remote contingency in a European Union country, we should consider other countries which are not members at present. We are not legislating only for the next year or two; we hope, presumably, that once the Bill becomes an Act it will still be on the statute book when the next wave of accessions occurs.

We are looking at a very large community of 27 or 28 nations and the Minister is saying that the eventuality that one of them will become undemocratic is so remote that we do not need to take account of that in the Bill. On the other hand, she is saying that the countries on the second list, which are equally democratic—otherwise we would not apply the procedure to them—are obviously going to be more likely to drop out of being democratic and to become dictatorships. If that were not the case, there would be no point in differentiating between the two lists or in saying that we will have an order-making power to cross off those that are not members of the European Union, but, having joined the European Union, those states are so extremely unlikely to revert back to dictatorship or repression that we do not need an equivalent power.

I personally cannot see the logic in that, but we have obviously not succeeded in persuading the Minister that there should be a uniform approach. We shall have to take the matter away and consider, before we come to another stage, whether we want to pursue it further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.