Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Lords, 2022-04-04
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate In moving Motion A, I neglected to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who also attended the meeting about the Chagossians. I thank her for her kind words and acknowledge the role she has played. It sounds like there is agreement to the proposals we have put forward in Motion A. They were definitely well received by the other place and the Chagossian community. The route will be open in due course. I will keep the noble Baroness and the House updated. The Home Office will need some time to put in place the processes that will allow applicants, wherever they live, to make an application for BOTC and British citizenship. This will include creating access to historical records, which will help applicants demonstrate that they are direct descendants of someone born in the BIOT. I will update the House as soon as we have some clear idea of timescales I also confirm that, as the noble Baroness said, there will not be application fees. In the meantime, we will continue to work to deliver the £40 million support package she referred to, and we are working with the FCDO to consider whether we can use these funds to support Chagossians seeking to relocate to the UK, which seems a sensible use of the funds. I commend the measures to your Lordships’ House I turn to Motion B. I hope noble Lords will agree, as we have already done on Report, with the amended deprivation of citizenship clause. Thanks here are due to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich. We are simply not talking about measures which could affect 6 million people; we are talking about situations where a naturalised person has acquired citizenship fraudulently, or where this is conducive to the public good. I repeat, deprivation on conducive grounds is used sparingly and against those who pose a serious threat to the UK or whose conduct involves high harm. Appeal rights kick in when a person receives the notice telling them of the decision to deprive them of their citizenship. I also point out that the courts have found that only the deprivation order made without notice in the case of D4 was invalid. They did not find that all such orders are invalid. With respect, I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, to withdraw her amendment Turning to criminal offences and Motions L and M, I repeat that we want to ensure that prosecutors have maximum flexibility to deal with people arriving in but not entering the UK and also to tackle people smuggling. I have set out the sort of circumstances in which we expect these offences to be prosecuted. Amendments proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Paddick, would undermine our efforts to tackle egregious forms of criminality, and I invite the noble Lords not to press them Moving on to electronic travel authorisations, in Motion T, I was interested to note that the arguments being made against them are actually the reasons for the Irish to introduce one. Once the EU’s comes into force next year, Ireland will stand out as one of the few countries in Europe without an ETA-style pass, among all the other countries that have them. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, for explaining to me—an Irishwoman, with a father from Northern Ireland—the context of his amendment. We accept the need for further dialogue with interlocutors, including the Irish Government, Tourism Ireland and Tourism Northern Ireland. I totally accept that point I would also like to tell the House that the secondary legislation that will underpin the scheme, which will include details of fees, will be brought forward once the Bill receivers Royal Assent. I can provide assurances that the fees will be competitive with those of comparative systems run by other countries In response to concerns about tourism, I observe that people travel for a whole host of reasons, and while the cost or requirement to obtain an ETA in advance of travel may be a consideration, the experiences of other countries with similar schemes show that it is very unlikely to deter a genuine visitor. Once granted, an ETA will be valid for multiple trips to the UK. The cost is likely to be very small for travellers, relative to the cost of travel and the benefits of visiting the UK, and therefore it is unlikely to deter the majority of visitors. Moreover, many of the UK’s international partners have taken a similar approach to border security—the United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—meaning it is a very familiar concept for travellers. I invite the noble Lord not to press his amendment That leaves us only with Motion U. The preservation of life at sea remains our priority and we do not think we need to put this in the Bill. We therefore hope that noble Lords will not insist on this amendment; it is not necessary.