Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Law and Crime
Richard Quentin Fuller (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very pleased to be off those tenterhooks, although I am never very sure what tenterhooks are. They do not sound very comfortable New clause 39 provides the Government with an opportunity to achieve their objectives but on a more considerably secure legal footing than their current proposals would permit. The new clause has been informed by the concerns raised by the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Dame Sara Thornton. Clause 62 currently seeks to disqualify potential victims of trafficking from the protections afforded under the national referral mechanism. Those protections are important not just as a manifestation of the mercy of our country towards those whose lives have been made wretched by the exploitations of others but to enable more effective prosecution of the perpetrators of such trafficking. Consideration of exclusion from these protections therefore requires careful assessment of the consequences for both those factors. Moreover, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) mentioned, it should be considered in the context of our country’s leading position in international law on human trafficking. That is a position that we should not give up at all lightly My first concern with clause 62 as proposed is to ask: where is the evidence? Where is the evidence that access to the national referral mechanism is being abused, and where is the evidence from the Government on the impact of their proposal? My second concern with clause 62 is that it does not appear to address vexatious or unwarranted claims regarding access to the national referral mechanism. That point was also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green when he was speaking to his new clause. This is the wrong piece of legislation to do what the Government hope is the right thing, but which many of us fear will make the situation worse rather than better. In the absence of evidence for why this is a logical measure to adopt, I am perplexed as to why clause 62 has been drafted in this way My concern is also that subsections (3)(b) and (3)(f) provide a very low bar for disqualification based on criminal sentencing. For those, like me, who are not familiar with modern slavery, it may sound odd that there is public interest in supporting people who have committed crimes either here or, more likely, overseas that carry a 12-month sentence—that is the bar—but that public interest is the same public interest as we have in trying to reach the main perpetrators in county lines drug gangs or serious fraud cases The public interest is in enabling sufficient evidence to be collated to bring successful prosecutions against the co-ordinators of those crimes, which is where I fear this clause falls short in subsections (3)(b) and (3)(f). I see good reasons in the other subsections and paragraphs for why clause 62 makes sense, but subsections (3)(b) and (3)(f) are clearly very different. I am interested in understanding the Minister’s logic Although this is an immigration Bill, clause 62 will largely apply to people already here, including British citizens, who currently make up the majority of victims. Because it refers to the national referral mechanism, most British victims will fall foul of this clause. The data suggests that the vast majority of British victims would fail under the Bill’s disqualifying remit, as the majority of cases involving British victims involve criminal exploitation. Even those who fall under labour or sexual exploitation often participate in criminal activities as part of their exploitation and so may end up being "unworthy" of support. I fear that is not what we are trying to do, and it should not be in an immigration Bill Another concern that has been raised with me is that there are currently significant difficulties in bringing prosecutions for modern slavery. As previous speakers have mentioned, with approximately 10,000 potential victims of modern slavery identified in the UK last year and only 238 convictions, it is clear that the process is at risk of being overloaded How does it help for there to be new additional legal requirements to investigate the criminal history of each and every potential victim who is seeking access to the national referral mechanism? How on earth will that help? Have we not been here before, more than a decade ago? I do not like to refer back to the bad old days of immigration under Labour, but what a complete mess Labour made of it. The lives of many of my former constituents in Bedford, and the constituents of many hon. and right hon. Members here, were ruined by the Home Office’s processes, and those processes are still not where they need to be. With this new provision on access to the national referral mechanism, the Home Office is at it again, making it more complicated, making it more difficult and, ultimately, making a rod for its own back New clause 39 would remove children from the scope of clause 62, which is important. We do not want children to fall foul of other rules and regulations, certainly when it comes to their criminal record or otherwise. Will the Minister address that directly The new clause preserves the Government’s power to remove individuals from the UK who pose "an immediate, genuine, present and serious threat to public order" We understand the Government want to make these changes, and there may be good reason for doing so, but let us set the bar higher and let us make it more pertinent so that we do not block the whole system and unduly use immigration law to address modern slavery. That seems a sensible change to make New clause 39 would change the wording of the Bill so that a person who claims to have been trafficked improperly will not be treated as having acted in bad faith, which is more in line with the trafficking convention. When a Government seek to conflate effective modern slavery legislation a little too much with immigration law, it is important that we refer to the founding principles of that first set of legislation. Let us not be wishy-washy by saying we can make it up as we go along. Let us not import one schedule from one Act and say it will work fine in this Bill, which seems sloppy. It seems much better to place it more firmly and resolutely in international conventions and other aspects of international law.