Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-05
Topic: Immigration
John Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it has been a most interesting debate. I was rather surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, refer to a consensus emerging on this subject this afternoon. There has certainly been no consensus in the debate I have listened to; rather, a set of very different, diametrically opposed views based on different moral assumptions. There is nothing inherently wrong about that, but I think we have discussed the matter pretty comprehensively It is quite difficult to draw clear conclusions as to the central indicators thrown up by a debate such as this, but there are one or two things that stand out. First, it is very important that we have a policy that is humane, that we can be proud of and that we can defend around the world because it clearly is humane. Secondly, it follows that we have to make sure that we do not split families. It seems to me that there should be an overriding criterion that we should do everything possible to keep families together. That does not happen at the present time, but it should. Thirdly, it is very important that the policies we come up with are coherent—in other words, they are not in contradiction one with the other. We should not have a situation in which you win on the left-hand side but lose on the right-hand side at the same time There are some very peculiar things about our law at the present time, not least that you have to be in this country already in order to make an application for asylum here. That does not make any practical sense at all to me, because it is impossible to come into this country and be here for five seconds without being an illegal immigrant, breaking the law and risking a four-year prison sentence. Therefore, in my view, that has to be changed. We must change that system to have a policy that we can reasonably defend It is also terribly important that what we say is said in good faith. If, for example, we want to argue that we do not have any space for immigrants, it is no use, in my view, using the argument, as happens at the present time, that there are just terrible delays at the Home Office and we cannot do anything about it, or that there is just a large queue of people waiting to be looked after. That is not the case and it should not be used as an excuse. We instead should make sure that the Home Office becomes a bit more efficient. Efficiency in government is a good thing in principle, and there must be ways of making sure that you can reduce the time taken to process applications in the Home Office, or indeed other ministries We really must be prepared to get rid of and replace the extraordinary system we have at the present time under which you have to be resident here when you make an application for asylum, which is surely unnecessary—and incredible. If you get rid of that, you have to ask yourself what you would do instead. I think that means that you take these applications as they come, make sure that you maintain a minimum standard for response times and make sure that your officials live up to that by accepting targets and perhaps receiving bonuses that are subject to achieving the targets, or that sort of thing. That is and ought to be a part of good government in many areas Finally, a good solution that has elements of all these things would be for the Government to set up some office in different parts of the European Union—the obvious places would be Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer—where officials of the Ministry of Justice or the Foreign Office could examine applications, come to a preliminary conclusion, discuss matters with the applicant where necessary and make some progress, which is not happening at the present time, in the solution of individual cases.