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Lord Avebury: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her reply, even though I cannot say that I took much comfort from it. As I understood what she said, it would be the intention of the Government to prosecute people under these provisions, even if it subsequently emerged that they had a perfectly genuine case. They would come here as refugees; they would qualify under the convention; and they would be allowed to remain here as requiring asylum under the convention. Nevertheless, we are going to start by putting them in prison. That seems to be a curious way of helping someone to resettle when he has escaped from a foreign dictatorship. That is how I took the noble Baroness's—
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I am sorry that the noble Lord took it that way. We are trying to send a very clear signal. The noble Lord will know that on a number of occasions when policies have changed, people pick up on the new signals. We are sending a very clear signal that the destruction of documents is not to be advised and that those who come here with a genuine claim can do so with false documentation and make their claim. We are not saying that those who have genuine cases should in any way be treated disadvantageously. We are trying to persuade people to be honest, frank and open so that we can help them.
Lord Avebury: As I said during the debate on the previous amendment, the noble Baroness can explain that in this House and she can probably get it across to your Lordships. However, she cannot persuade people in Mogadishu who are creating false documentation to send people here to escape carnage and suffering in that country that they must comply with the rules established by your Lordships. That is the difficulty. I am afraid that it is not a clear signal. One can put up notices at Heathrow or Dover or wherever but, by that time, it is too late.
If the noble Baroness really means what she says—that she intends to give a clear signal that if people come here they will be prosecuted for this offence—the place to put up the notices will be Mogadishu or any place from which large numbers of asylum seekers appear on our doorstep. That would not be very difficult because the Home Office's asylum statistics show that about a dozen countries appear at the top of the league. Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and so on are there regularly, quarter after quarter.
Therefore, if the noble Baroness can assure me that she will undertake a publicity campaign in places from which asylum seekers arrive in this country, I shall be much happier than I am when I hear assurances about notices at Heathrow or Dover. I notice that the noble Baroness is not leaping to her feet and so I assume that there will not be any such campaign and that people will, inevitably, set off on such journeys without having the knowledge of this legislation or of the prosecutions to which they may be liable when they arrive in the United Kingdom. Having said that, I am convinced that we shall not make further headway on this matter this afternoon and we shall have to think about whether to return to it at a later stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 9 and 10 not moved.]
Lord Avebury moved Amendment No. 11:
- Page 3, line 40, leave out "or" and insert "and"
The noble Lord said: The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the new offence in Clause 2 does not apply to immigration interviews where the applicant is not an asylum seeker. This subsection was debated at some length in Committee in another place and the Government tabled amendments on Report to meet some of the points that were raised. In particular, it was argued that a person could have better reasons for not having a passport when attending an interview some time after his arrival than someone who had just disembarked from a plane. The Minister acknowledged that to be so.
The Minister said that the intention behind the amendments tabled by the Government on Report was to,
- "cover any interview in which a person seeks leave to enter or remain and, so far as they are not already covered, claims that removal would breach our obligations under the refugee convention or the European convention on human rights".—[Official Report, Commons; 1/3/04; col. 619.]
The people who turn up for interviews without documentation, whether at the ports or in-country, are mainly asylum seekers, whereas the Minister said that people already given refugee status in other European countries are entering the UK on a CTD or otherwise and then arriving at the asylum screening unit without the documents and claiming asylum.
Since the beginning of 2003, asylum seekers have been fingerprinted in all EU countries under the Eurodac scheme, and new applicants are routinely checked against that database. That means that if an asylum seeker enters the EU through another member state, applies for asylum on entry and then travels to the UK, destroying his documents on the way, he can be picked up and returned to the first country under the Dublin II convention.
In evidence before the Home Affairs Select Committee in another place last October, Mr Bill Jeffrey, director general of the IND, said that so far his organisation had identified 1,454 passengers who had already made an application elsewhere and that the number was running at 140 a month, or just over 15 per cent of all undocumented arrivals. Presumably there would be a time-lag because some of the arrivals at that time would have crossed into the EU before Eurodac came into operation and we could expect to see a further increase in the proportion of the undocumented arrivals as belonging to some other country. If the Minister could give us more up-to-date figures, that would certainly be very useful.
I hope that the Eurodac scheme will be increasingly successful at preventing these undocumented arrivals from European countries. But, for the purposes of this amendment, we are talking about interviews where the applicant is not an asylum seeker and where there may be a different set of considerations.
People in these situations would have no reason for not producing their passport if they were able to do so. We are talking of people who had a limited leave to remain some time in the past and who are pursuing some lawful right to continue residing here for the same or another purpose; for example a student who has lost his passport moving between flats or hostels but has no proof and cannot remember precisely when the loss occurred, or an overstayer whose passport was lost by a previous representative and whose office has now been closed down, but who is married to a British citizen and seeks to remain in that regard.
It is not unknown either for passports to be lost within the Home Office, as I am sure the noble Baroness will acknowledge. The only exception to the rule that people should be able to produce passports on those occasions would be those who have entered clandestinely, as presumably some of those employed by the gang masters did, and who do not apply for asylum. As they would have no right to remain under any other heading, it would be futile to prosecute them and instead we should get them documented and returned to their countries of origin as soon as possible. I beg to move.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Hylton: I speak in support of Amendment No. 27, which helpfully sets out the kind of factors which need to be studied with great care, whether or not the amendment should be accepted. I refer in particular to paragraph 3 on disseminating the guidance that will be necessary, and to paragraph 4, which deals in part with the existing and new offences of trafficking, and goes on to refer to interpreters, a
matter to which I have referred on a considerable number of occasions during the passage of past Bills on this subject. The quality of interpretation is crucial. Paragraph 4 refers also to training for work with children and with survivors of torture and organised violence. On those grounds, the amendment is very helpful.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I thank the noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Hylton, for their comments. I hope that they will not be too disappointed if I say that I do not feel able to agree the amendments.
The Bill provides that the scope of the offence extends to any interview relating to an application for leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom or any interview relating to an asylum or human rights claim. The amendment would restrict the scope of the offence to any interview relating to an application for leave to enter or remain which is based upon asylum or human rights but nothing else. So only those applying for asylum or making a human rights claim would be potentially liable under the Clause 2 offence. It is unusual and somewhat paradoxical for the noble Lord to seek to put asylum seekers and those falling into the position of applicants of human rights claims into a more onerous position than others.
Clause 2 is designed to catch the mischief of people disposing of their passport. Such behaviour is unacceptable, whatever the basis on which a person is seeking to enter or stay in the United Kingdom, so it is necessary that the scope of the offence covers all types of applications and not just those based on asylum or human rights grounds.
It may well be in practice that the majority of people who are tempted to dispose of their passport go on to claim asylum or human rights. However, there are occasions when someone seeks leave on other grounds after having disposed of their passport for no acceptable reason. They might, for example, feel that that would hide their true identity and frustrate their removal. We need the offence in Clause 2 to be available for those types of cases.
There are many occasions where, for example, we pick up a person who is a legal entrant and are in the process of removing them when they seek to prevent that removal by saying that it would breach their rights under the Refugee Convention or the ECHR. It is debatable whether in doing that the person would be seeking leave to enter or remain as opposed to simply resisting removal. As we want to ensure that such situations are covered by the offence, we have inserted specific reference to asylum and human rights.
I hope that I have explained why Clause 2 needs to cover all applications. The position with Clause 7, which is concerned with assessment, is somewhat different. It is unlikely that many people seeking leave on grounds other than asylum or human rights would follow the sort of behaviour set out in the clause in order to enhance their claim. Being unco-operative and/or failing to produce a passport is, for example, unlikely to lead to a successful outcome. Where,
nevertheless, a person seeking leave on non-asylum or human rights grounds adopts the sort of behaviour outlined in Clause 7, the normal outcome is that their claim will be refused on the basis that they have not met the requirements of the immigration rules. In particular, paragraph 320(3) makes failure to provide a valid passport a mandatory refusal under the rules. So, there is no need to get into issues of credibility. The application would be refused and the person removed.The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raises, as he always does, quite properly, the issue of interpreters and the need for high-quality interpretation so that what is said is accurately recorded and reported and so that improper misunderstandings are eradicated. Who could disagree with him? I shall not disagree with him on this occasion as I have not on any other when he has raised this issue.
However, in relation to these issues I do not think that the amendments take us very much further. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, recognised the success of Eurodac. We shall continue to seek the maximum number of third country removals to the EU countries and that will not be affected by Clause 2. The Government will listen carefully to all the arguments made during this debate and seek to further clarify issues. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, raised the question of notices in other countries. We shall look to see what we can do to ensure that this policy is better understood by all those who need to know of it. I am sure that our agencies and embassies in other countries will do their duty, as they have done. If I do not specifically say that in relation to each and every amendment, I hope that noble Lords will understand it as a general comment that we shall review everything that is said in Committee. If there are matters that we can clarify, we shall endeavour so to do.
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