Lord Murray of Blidworth:

Moved by Lord Murray of Blidworth

That this House do not insist on its Amendment 9B, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason 9C.

9C: Because the Amendment is contrary to the purpose of the Bill to prevent and deter unlawful migration.

My Lords, I beg to move Motion B that this House do not insist on its Amendment 9B to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason 9C. I will also speak to Motions C, D and E.

Amendment 9B was rejected by the Commons for the second time earlier today by an increased majority. The elected House agrees that declaring asylum and certain human rights claims to be inadmissible is a core part of the scheme provided for in the Bill which must not be reversed. It is not a proportionate or considered amendment and simply creates a perverse incentive whereby people exploit every opportunity, including through protracted legal challenges facilitated by the early amendments, to reach the six-month point.

I note Amendment 9D has an additional provision, but this does not substantially change the effect of the earlier version of this amendment. Having debated this Bill for many hours, we will all be familiar with one of the key objectives of it—to remove illegal entrants in days and weeks, not months or years. That should be our start and end point. As such, this amendment is not only wrong but it is not needed.

I turn to Amendment 23B. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, suggested last week that the Government’s case against this amendment was simply to provide an assurance that,

“this will all come out in the wash”.—[Official Report, 12/7/23; col. 1826.]

There is rather more to it than that. The legislation is clear and affords the necessary protection for LGBT people fearful of persecution if they are removed to a particular country.

Throughout the debates in this House, I have been clear that it is simply not the case that anyone who meets the conditions in Clause 2 can be sent to any of the countries listed in Schedule 1 without further ado. The schedule needs to be read with the provisions in Clause 5, which determine whether a person can be returned to their home country, and with the provisions later in the Bill which enable a person to make a serious harm suspensive claim where they are being removed to a third country.

As to the noble and learned Lord’s point about Rwanda and the ongoing litigation, I point him to the terms of the Commons reason, which states that the amendment is not necessary

“because removal of any person to any country will only be done where the arrangements to do this are lawful”.

The Bill therefore already contains sufficient safeguards. This was recognised by the Commons when they voted for a second time to reject this amendment.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, are doughty defenders of LGBT rights, and I entirely understand their desire to get clarity and certainty on this issue. I believe that the Bill provides the necessary clarity, and on that basis, and in view of the further vote by the Commons to disagree with the amendment, I hope that the noble and learned Lord and the noble Lord will now be content to support Motion C.

The detention powers in the Bill are fundamental to achieving its objectives. We need a robust scheme which broadly applies to all and does not allow the system to be gamed. The Bill is designed to be operated both quickly and fairly, and our aim is to ensure that people are not held in detention for longer than is absolutely necessary to effect their removal from the UK.

With regard to Amendment 33B and the detention of families for no more than 96 hours, or the new Amendment 33D, which sets a time limit of 120 hours, I put it to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol that these amendments risk creating a significant loophole in the system. We will see criminal gangs putting together fake family groups, more adults seeking to pass themselves off as children, and genuinely unaccompanied children being put at risk.

On Amendments 36C and 36D, I remind noble Lords that unaccompanied children are not subject to the duty to remove. The power to remove them in Clause 3 will be exercised only in limited circumstances. Therefore, for the most part, unaccompanied children will not be detained under the provisions of the Bill but will instead be quickly transferred to local authority accommodation.

Where an unaccompanied child is detained, this will be for the shortest possible time, in appropriate detention facilities and with relevant support provisions in place. Such a person will be detained in age-appropriate accommodation, as the law already provides. As I informed the House previously, this is already set out in the Detention Centre Rules 2001.

The elected House has now on three occasions endorsed the Government’s positions on the detention powers in the Bill. Indeed, the votes earlier today delivered increased majorities for the Government’s position. Your Lordships’ House should be under no illusion that the position would change if new Amendments 36E and 36F, which only marginally change the earlier amendments, were returned to the other place. I beg to move.