Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-10
Topic: Immigration
David Alton (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, I refer to a non-financial interest: I am a trustee of the Arise Foundation, which works for victims of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I too wish Part 5 was not in this Bill at all. As the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, told the Committee, it is odd to put issues concerning immigration and human trafficking together in this way, as though they are part and parcel of the same problem. They are not That is why my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss was right to be as passionate as she was and, reinforced by the remarks of my noble friend Lady Prashar, to say that the Government really need to recast and rethink this all over again. My noble and learned friend referred to the Salvation Army which is, as she said, the advisers to the Government on this issue. It says: "The Salvation Army has held the Government’s Modern Slavery Victim Care and Co-ordination contract for over 10 years. In that time, we have supported 15,000 survivors of modern slavery. We, along with our colleagues across the anti-trafficking sector"— all of us have seen reams of representations from pretty much every representative group that there is— "would urge you to … ensure that vulnerable survivors of trafficking and slavery are not prevented from accessing the support they deserve." It is hard to see how many of the measures that we are debating very briefly in the context of such an important set of provisions will enable that to happen. I do not want to pre-empt what I am going to say on my Amendment 156A on the national referral mechanism, but simply to reinforce what the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said in his curtain-raising remarks for the whole of this section My noble friend Lord Hylton, and I, along with my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, worked with the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, who was in another place at that time and doing incredibly energetic hard-working things to get the 2015 legislation on to the statute book. We all paid tribute then, as that came through on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, through both Houses, to the right honourable Theresa May, for what Lady May did in working for this legislation to happen. However the history books judge her period as Prime Minister or Home Secretary, I believe this is her most lasting legacy and something she should be enormously proud of. That is why I too quoted her remarks at Second Reading, and I was glad to hear the noble Lord refer to them again today. I urge the Minister to go back to what she had to see had to say about this The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol and I go back a long way. She was once a curate in what was then the Liverpool Mossley Hill constituency, so, we also have something in common with the Minister. Bristol and Liverpool have something in common: their knowledge of the transatlantic slave trade. In 2015, we saw this as a way of cleansing some of the past: not breaking down monuments or trying to cancel history but doing something positive. My worry is that what we are doing now is undoing so much of that good work. What are these imaginary windmills that, like Don Quixote, we are being encouraged to tilt at today? There is no data. Where is the justification? Knowing that the Minister has a forensic brain, I hope he will take us through what the justifications are for what we have here. Why, as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said, are we disregarding what our own Joint Committee on Human Rights has said to us I have one more thing to say, and that is on Amendment 154, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker: Proposed new subsection (2A)(g) refers to "fear of repercussions from people who exercise control over the person" Certainly, through the work that I have been privileged to be involved in with the Arise Foundation, we have seen many examples of that. That children are being treated no differently in this legislation beggars belief Amendment 154 also refers to victims of trauma. If someone has been traumatised, then of course the statements they will make, even possibly the untruths they feel they have to tell to prevent being sent back where they came, should not be held against them. This section also deals with people with diminished capacity, and I was struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said in one of her examples about people with diminished responsibility. We have all seen cases like that. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, who we will hear from later on, has done more than anyone in your Lordships’ House to draw to our attention the need to do more to help vulnerable people in that situation These amendments are good, but you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I wish this was not in this Bill at all. There is still time for the Government to recast. Given the concerns that have been echoed, not just here, but right across the sector, I hope that the Minister will take this back to the Home Office, take it back to the Government, and say let us think again.