Angela Eagle MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The idea behind the creation of interim serious crime prevention orders is to ensure that they can be brought into use ahead of a longer lasting serious crime prevention order. The widening of the range of organisations that can apply for them is designed to empower organisations such as the National Crime Agency, HMRC and the MOD police to apply, because they are much closer to the evidence that could enable the disruption of a particular serious organised crime group. The hon. Member for Weald of Kent asked how long it would take to get such an order, and that would vary from case to case. It depends on the evidence. As I pointed out in relation to the previous clause, this is about the High Court reviewing the papers. It is not about a trial or a pre-trial; it is just about issuing an order that will prevent something that might cause damage from happening. We think that the changes made by the clauses that we have just debated, up to and including clause 48, make it more likely that serious and organised crime orders will be used and will be effective. Question put and agreed to. Clause 48 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 49 Notification requirements Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  This is essentially future proofing. If another category or range of people became available, we may future proof this power and use the regulation-making power to ensure that they are taking biometrics lawfully. Question put and agreed to. Clause 42 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 43 Articles for use in serious crime Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Clause 47 introduces interim serious crime prevention orders as part of the wider regime of serious crime prevention orders established under the Serious Crime Act 2007. Interim serious crime prevention orders are designed to protect the public while a full serious crime prevention order application is considered. The Court can impose an interim serious crime prevention order within hours, imposing a range of conditions and restrictions to disrupt further criminal behaviour. For example, anyone suspected of being involved in people trafficking or other serious crime could face bans on travel, using the internet and mobile phone use.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  As always, the Lib Dems are keeping us on our toes. I hope there is a benign reason why they are not in attendance today—perhaps my horrible cold made its way over to them and they are not well. Clause 38 repeals the vast majority—not all—of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. We decided not to take a blanket approach to repealing it all, and we will have that debate when the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire speaks to new clause 2. He has given us the choice whether to repeal the Illegal Migration Act as a whole. Our view, which I will explain in response to his speech, is that there are a few useful clauses in the Act that we have decided to keep on the statute book. In general, we all know that the Illegal Migration Act was a flawed piece of legislation that made it impossible for us to process and run asylum claims. It was on the statute book in the context of the Safety of Rwanda Act, which assumed that anyone who arrived after March 2023 would not be allowed to become part of an asylum claim in this country. It contained the so-called duty to remove, which placed a statutory duty on the Home Secretary to remove everyone who came to this country after that time. It was flawed in many ways, but it made it impossible for us to run asylum claims in this country lawfully. Therefore, it is important that the vast majority of this flawed legislation should be removed from the statute book, and that is what clause 38 does. I will set out in detail why we have decided to keep six clauses of the Act. I will try to explain to the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire and the rest of the Committee our thinking behind each case, but I will do so when the new clause has been spoken to.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  This has been a small but perfectly formed debate on clause 38, which repeals all but six sections of the Illegal Migration Act. As Government Members have pointed out, despite the amount of time that has lapsed since the Act got on the statute book, the vast majority of its provisions have never been commenced. In fact, we had to commence one tiny bit of it so that we could restart asylum processing; that is probably the most it ever had any effect. Let us be clear: the Illegal Migration Act meant that thousands of asylum claims were put on hold, because of the duty to remove, increasing the backlog, putting incredible pressure on the asylum accommodation system and creating what has been called the “perma-backlog”. We all know what that was, and how big it was when we came into Government. The Act has largely not been commenced, nor will it be under this Government. We need to sort out the chaos created by the unworkable and contradictory provisions in the Act. Despite the bravado of the hon. Member for Stockton West in his earlier contribution, I suspect that most Conservative Ministers knew that the Act was unworkable, because it was not commenced when they had the ministerial capacity and power to do so for all the time between when it was put on the statute book and when we formed a new Government a year later. The system had been left in chaos but, were the Government to accept new clause 2 and simply repeal the entire Act, it would lead to a missed opportunity to improve our immigration system. I will go through some of that with the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. Clause 38 will repeal section 2 of the 2023 Act, which provides for the duty to remove. The Government are committed to ending the migration and economic partnership with Rwanda, so section 2 will be repealed to deliver that by repealing the duty to remove and associated provisions. On sections 22 to 28 of the Illegal Migration Act, we are not retaining the vast majority of modern slavery provisions in the Act because they are connected to the duty to remove irregular migrants. These sections were never commenced and provided that where a duty to remove was applied for an individual, that individual should be disqualified from the national referral mechanism unless certain limited exemptions applied. We are removing sections 30 to 37 relating to permanent bans on entry, settlement and citizenship, which, while held up as a success by others, were unenforced and unworkable. Sections 57 and 58 of the Act are also repealed. They relate to age assessments, but both sections are unworkable and irrelevant without the duty to remove.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  There will not be a blanket ban. Individuals who have been subject to public order disqualification will have been disqualified for things such as multiple drug offences, possessing a firearm and ammunition, multiple counts of sexual assault and assault by beating, grooming and engaging in sexual communication with a child. Those are the kind of things that currently lead to public order disqualifications. Nothing in the retention of section 29 will mean that individual circumstances on a case-by-case basis cannot be taken into account. It is important to understand that that will still happen. If it were commenced—it has not yet been—section 29 would introduce a duty to apply the public order disqualification, unless there are compelling circumstances that the disqualification should not apply. That still ensures case-by-case consideration. The citizenship ban is removed from the Bill because it was unworkable and unenforced; that is, again, attached to the duties to remove. We have updated the good character guidance to prevent people from gaining citizenship if they arrived illegally by dangerous journeys. The idea is to emphasise that citizenship is not a right, but a privilege. We will continue to make those decisions on a case-by-case basis. The other sections that we have retained are thought to be useful. The six measures in section 12 emphasise the right of the Secretary of State to determine what constitutes a reasonable time period to detain a person for the specific statutory purpose of effecting removal from the UK. Section 52 allows flexibility in our judiciary by making first-tier tribunal judges eligible to sit in the upper-tier tribunal. I cannot imagine anyone in the Committee would worry about that. Section 59, if commenced, would extend the inadmissibility provisions to asylum and human rights claims from nationals in a list of generally safe states. Section 60 requires an annual cap to be set on the number of individuals admitted to the UK by safe and legal routes. Section 62 adds failing to provide information, such as a passcode to an electronic device, to the behaviours that could be considered damaging to the credibility of an asylum and human rights claim. All those issues are thought to provide utility, but outside the context of the duty to remove. Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Elegant.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  We have had an interesting debate about taking the Safety of Rwanda Act off the statute book, as clause 37 does. I am distressed that the Conservative party continues to assert without evidence—in fact, contrary to most evidence—that that Act and the Illegal Migration Act were about to work. Apparently, those Acts were on the cusp of being a great success when the evil new Government came along and cancelled them. I speculate that many Conservative Members are secretly pleased that they can assert that, because it gets them out of an embarrassing, expensive farrago; the Safety of Rwanda Act will go down in this country’s history as one of the most catastrophic pieces of legislation that Parliament has ever dealt with. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham rightly pointed out, it was not ordinary or normal for Conservative ex-Prime Minister John Major to pronounce the Act to be “un-Conservative”. The Act is many things, unconservative being one of them. Government Members, and the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, assert that the Act was not a deterrent. This is the current discourse: we are saying that it was not a deterrent and that we can prove it, and the Conservative party, which was responsible for the Act, is left asserting that it was a deterrent, despite there being absolutely no evidence for that despite all the years since the policy was announced and all the years the Act was on the statute book. That reminds me of discussions I used to have as a student—a very long time ago—about whether communism in its pure sense had actually ever existed. It was obviously a failure, but when one came across the ideologues, they simply asserted that the communism that had been tried to date just was not pure enough, and it was therefore still likely to succeed if ever it was tried properly. Does that sound similar to the discussions we are having about this iteration of fantasy asylum policy as gimmick? I think it does.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous. Of course, that is what Committee debates are meant to be about; it is easier to have a bit more to and fro in Committee than it often is on the Floor of the House, when we have two and a half minutes and we have had to rewrite our speech and discard most of what we were going to say. Will the hon. Gentleman admit that the way in which the Illegal Migration Act interacted with the Safety of Rwanda Act meant that nobody could be processed at all; they were just stuck, and there was a build-up in hotels of small boat arrivals and other asylum claimants who could not be processed? That meant that there was a big backlog, and we have had to restart decision making. That inevitably means that there will be a slowdown in sending back people who have arrived by small boat until we can get on top of the backlog that the Conservative Government created.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Home Secretary has said that she does not rule out third country processing; that is not the same as the Rwanda scheme, which was deportation to a third country permanently. I think the hon. Gentleman is talking about third country returns, such as reviving the Dublin system. When the previous Government negotiated the EU withdrawal agreement, they perhaps should have included something about returns to Europe. Had they done so, perhaps we would be in a different situation, but those would also have been third country returns. He asked a wide-ranging question, and I have been as honest as I can in answering it at this point. We could spend all day, and probably many more days, talking about the failure encompassed in the interaction of the Safety of Rwanda Act and the Illegal Migration Act. Our job today, though, is to tidy it up. Clause 37 will take the Safety of Rwanda Act off the statute book and put it in the dustbin of history, where it belongs. Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend realise that the detention estate was used by the Conservative party to empty some prison places and try to relieve pressure there? I think it highly unlikely that there would be even 400 spaces.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Work is going on in the Department to assess the accuracy of the various methods of age assessment, which ministerial predecessors from the hon. Gentleman’s party commenced, but which has not yet been finished. As soon as we have more idea about how reliable scientific age assessment can be, how expensive it is and all those things, I will either come to Parliament or make a statement about how we intend to proceed. The hon. Gentleman must not assume that because these sections have been repealed we are not interested in scientific age assessments and their potential per se. They were simply unworkable because they were attached to the duty to remove, which was such a feature of the Illegal Migration Act. The six measures that the Government intend to retain, including where provisions are in force, have been identified as having operational utility and benefit. These powers are all ones that the Government see as important tools to allow for the proper operation of the immigration system and to achieve wider priorities alongside the powerful measures set out in the Bill. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire talked about section 29 of the Illegal Migration Act. The public order disqualification under the Nationality and Borders Act is currently in operation. It enables decisions to disqualify certain individuals from support and protections afforded by the national referral mechanisms on grounds of public order and bad faith. Public order grounds include serious criminality and threats to national security. Such decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, considering the individual’s vulnerabilities. That is the sole modern slavery measure in the Illegal Migration Act that is being retained. It would, if commenced, amend the public order disqualification to allow more foreign national offenders to be considered for disqualification from modern slavery protections on public order grounds. Disqualification will continue to be assessed on an individual basis.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  First things first: the hon. Gentleman was not going to send to Rwanda only those whom we could not return to their own country; in theory, he was going to deport to Rwanda absolutely everybody who arrived to claim asylum after March 2023—that was what we were told. In reality, those people all ended up in hotels, unable to be processed and growing in number, while the Conservative party indulged in its expensive gimmicks and fantasies of how the world should be. As many Committee members have pointed out, the day job was not being done while that parallel universe policy was being developed. It took all the attention away from running what is a complex enough system as it is. Many resources were diverted to try to create that new reality, resulting in the neglect of the system, and huge backlogs were built into the system because of how the Illegal Migration Act interacted with the Safety of Rwanda Act. That made it impossible to run the current system or to move to a new system that was remotely workable, thereby landing this country with a huge, dysfunctional series of backlogs, and a system that we have had to literally start up again from scratch to try to get working coherently.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure once more to be in this delightful room doing line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill. The clause repeals in full the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. The Act, which requires that decision makers treat Rwanda as a safe third country for the purposes of removing individuals there, and disapplies sections of the Human Rights Act 1998, was passed by the previous Government in an attempt to facilitate removals to Rwanda under the migration and economic development partnership. Despite that, the Act has served no practical purpose since it became law: no decisions were made that were affected by its provisions, and, as we have stated repeatedly, only four individuals were ever relocated voluntarily. No enforced removals to Rwanda ever took place under the partnership. The Government have been clear from the outset that we will not proceed with the partnership. There is no evidence that it was successful in deterring small boat arrivals, nor has it delivered value for money for the British taxpayer. On the contrary, nearly 84,000 people arrived on small boats between 14 April 2022, which was the date the partnership was announced by the former Government, and 5 July 2024, which was the day after this Government were elected. The Government have been clear that we will not make further payments to Rwanda, saving £100 million in upcoming annual economic transformation and integration fund payments, and a further £120 million that the UK would otherwise have been liable to pay once 300 individuals had been relocated to Rwanda. That is without even considering the additional staffing and operational costs, which would have been substantial. We will also exit the UK-Rwanda treaty as part of ending the partnership. It is therefore appropriate for the Government to repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act so that the legislation, which relies on the provisions of the treaty, will no longer be on the statute book. That is what clause 37 achieves.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman will have noted on the front of the Bill that we are debating the statement from the Home Secretary on the European convention on human rights: “In my view the provisions of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.”

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will try to give the hon. Gentleman some insight. I was going to come on to this when addressing the clause itself, but it is in the Bill because we have perceived a change in behaviour in some areas. There has been an increase in physical aggression towards other people, including migrants and third parties. There is a lot more violence on the beaches against French police. There is intimidating and controlling behaviour on the boats. People are preventing others from disembarking or calling for help when the boat gets into difficulty. There are physical acts that result in harm being caused to another person either while boarding a boat or while on a boat. People are being pushed off boats, including in shallow French territorial waters. The pilots sometimes decide to continue on to the UK even when there have been fatalities or serious harm on the boat. We are now seeing a range of behaviours that clause 18 will allow us to address. I will address amendment 5, but the view of the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire is that no asylum seeker should be charged with this new criminal offence, which would render clause 18 unworkable and pointless, as 95% of people who come across on small boats claim asylum. How one behaved on the boat across will be in the purview of clause 18, whether it is dangling children over the side or forcing women and children to sit in the middle—often the middle of the boats come free and collapse, so the women and children are the first to die. Where women and children are forced to sit in the middle, they sometimes arrive in the UK with horrific burns because of the combination of fuel and seawater, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said. I simply do not agree with the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire that, just because someone will claim asylum when they get to the UK, none of their behaviour on the way over should have any bearing on what happens when they get here. Clause 18, which creates a new criminal offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act, will not criminalise everyone who makes these crossings. It would be pointless and completely unworkable if we sought to do that, as the Opposition amendments do. It is about addressing, discouraging and deterring the acts that cause or create a risk of serious injury or death to others, which we are now seeing from individuals travelling to the UK by small boats. There have to be consequences for anyone who further jeopardises the safety and lives of others during these dangerous crossings. There are those who insist on continuing their journey when assistance is at hand, who refuse assistance, and often, when there have been fatalities, try to prevent others from being rescued. Clause 18 addresses specific acts that create or cause a risk of serious injury or death to others during a journey. We heard in oral evidence how these journeys are being made more dangerous by such acts, and clause 18 is a response to the increasing propensity of this kind of behaviour. There have been shocking and tragic cases of women and children being forced and intimidated into life-threatening positions during journeys that are already dangerous enough, which is exactly the type of offending that clause 18 aims to target. The approach cannot simply be to say that whatever happens on the boat, stays on the boat. The new offence is another tool designed to curb the endangerment of life. It sits alongside other activity against gangs that intentionally place people in danger by selling these crossings as a viable route to the UK. This Government take fatalities and injuries at sea extremely seriously, and we are going further than ever to try to bring an end to them.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It has been a while since the sitting began, and it is easy to overlook that I have not been up on my feet so far. We have had an interesting debate. The amendments before us range from, at one end, the Opposition, whose amendments seek to criminalise everyone who gets in a small boat and presumably cart them directly to prison, through to the other end of the argument, represented with his usual passion by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, who feels that, if someone is an asylum seeker, they should be exempt from being judged at all on the behaviour that happens on the boat. I will deal with some of those points in turn, but I also want to compliment my colleagues who have made their own comments and some very important points in this debate. It is important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh said, that we are clear-eyed about what is happening in the channel. We can be romantic about it in many ways, as the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire often appear to be, or we can regard all those who come over as criminals and a threat, but the truth is somewhere in between. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East made a moving speech about the realities of what can happen in these circumstances; it is easy to forget, when we are sat in a nice warm Committee Room—although it is not always warm, facing as it does on to the river. Imagine ending up in the water in the channel, Mr Stuart; you can last only so long. You could easily have a heart attack in that cold water and not be resuscitated. Clearly, if you are a child, or vulnerable in any other way, then that is likely to happen—and it will happen to you first. My hon. Friends the Members for Bassetlaw, for Clwyd East and for Dover and Deal made important points about the realities too. I will come on to what the Government are trying to do with this offence and why it is in the Bill, but I will deal with the amendments first. I hope I will be able to answer some of the questions that have been asked during this important debate— [ Interruption. ] I also hope that my voice is going to last out. Amendment 15 focuses on the length of the sentence attached to clause 18 and seeks to increase the sentence from six to 14 years where an irregular entrant arrival has caused or created a risk of serious personal injury or death to others during a sea crossing to the UK. Clause 18 introduces a new criminal offence that is to be inserted into section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971. The current sentence for the offence of arriving in breach of a deportation order under section 24(A1) of the Immigration Act is five years. Because clause 18 will be inserted into section 24 of the Act, the intention of the clause is to ensure that, given the egregious and serious natures of the acts committed under the new offence, the maximum sentencing is increased, albeit remaining in line with the existing sentencing framework in section 24 of the Act. The issues about the length of sentence are all about keeping sentencing in that section of the Immigration Act coherent. Grabbing extra, lengthier sentences out of the air to insert them into the Act can create inconsistency and mess up the structures of sentencing involved in the Act, making it less coherent than it should be. The sentence of five years was reached after discussions with partners about all the sentences and offences in this particular area, and it rightly reflects that coherence. An increased sentence of six years is considered to be appropriate for the endangerment offence. It furthers the deterrence aim of the policy, but is not so severe as to deter prosecutors from bringing a prosecution in the first instance. That is another area in which the rhetoric of even longer sentences deters prosecutors from bringing charges at all. We have seen that with the facilitation offences, where the introduction of a life sentence has led to fewer prosecutions being pursued; prosecutors think that for a sentence of that length, more obvious evidence has to be accrued, so they charge fewer people. An increased sentence can sometimes have a perverse effect on the system. We think that the sentence in the Bill is in keeping with the Immigration Act and is about right.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  In general, it is not expected that parents will be criminalised, but there is not a total ban on that. It will depend on what has happened and what the circumstances were. That will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. It is difficult to be more explicit about that, given that the nature of the offence represents a stricter law that is meant to deter people from making small boat crossings. It is a signal to smugglers and passengers that fatalities and injuries at sea are taken extremely seriously, so there may well be consequences for particular unacceptable behaviour of the sort that I have talked about. I would not want there to be an absolute exclusion, but I would not expect a large cohort of people to fall within the purview of the new offences.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes, and it is not for me to get into the head of the hon. Member for Stockton West. Perhaps he will talk to us about why he picked that particular number. I agree with the hon. Member for—is it Worthing? [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Woking—I knew it began with a W, and my own constituency begins with a W, so we are there or thereabouts in the dictionary. Similarly, amendment 16 seeks to increase the sentence from five years to 14 years where an irregular migrant or arrival has caused or created a risk of serious personal injury or death to others during a sea crossing to the UK and is entering without the requisite leave to enter, entry clearance or electronic travel authorisation. As with the approach taken to those who arrive in breach of a deportation order, and as discussed in relation to amendment 15, clause 18 will provide an increased sentence compared with the offences under section 24(B1), (D1) and (E1) of the Immigration Act.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will wait until the hon. Member for Stockton West has spoken to his new clause before I respond to anything he says about it; I will briefly outline what clause 23 does and if the hon. Gentleman wants a reply, I will come back at the end. Clause 23 will ensure that authorised officers can assess, examine, copy and use information stored on a relevant article. It will enable authorised officers to copy the information from electronic devices so that the device can be returned to the owner as soon as possible. The clause is vital to enable authorised officers to obtain the information needed in relation to facilitation offences under sections 25 and 25A of the Immigration Act 1971, to use for purposes relating to the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of such an offence. It is very much targeted at organised immigration crime and the facilitation of illegal entry to this country. Clause 23 will help the Government to tackle organised crime groups, protect migrants from exploitation and prevent lives from being lost on dangerous journeys across the channel. Obtaining that information will further focus our approach to tackling organised crime groups, identifying as early as possible the trends in the activities of gangs, including their modus operandi, and providing the Government with improved information to prevent future fatalities.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. That is at the higher end of the harms that one would hope could be prevented by more timely access to this kind of information. These clauses will ensure that those charged with securing the border and beyond can use the information in line with the range of threat types enabled by cross-border lorry movements such as the one my hon. Friend just mentioned, to ensure that the law enforcement community engaged in tackling organised immigration crime, and wider serious and organised crime, are able to tackle it at pace. Clause 31 complements clause 30 by setting out how information received by the Home Office and the police may be disclosed onwards, with whom and for what purposes. Robust inter-agency and international co-operation is crucial to smashing the criminal gangs. Border Force routinely works with the National Crime Agency and the police for the purposes of criminal investigations connected with the smuggling of people and illicit goods, and with HMRC for customs purposes. The police, in turn, need to be able to alert law enforcement partners to identify specific trailers of interest. Border Force and the police also need to be able to alert European law enforcement partners to intercept trailers where there might be a threat to life and in support of cross-border co-operation against illicit goods. This clause, subject to safeguards contained in clause 32, enables just such an outcome to be achieved.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is important that we uphold standards and have those requirements, which is why the clauses we are debating do that. These clauses deal with the need, in an emergency situation, to evacuate people who are British citizens and/or people who live in families that include British citizens. It is about being able to get them to safety but, at the same time, to collect biometric information so that we can check who they are. It is much more effective for us to do that at the earliest opportunity rather than getting them to the UK or on UK territory and having to do it then. That is why the clauses will put us in a much better situation from the point of view of identity and security checks, if there is an emergency evacuation of British nationals from a particular place in the future, which we hope will not happen. Question put and agreed to. Clause 34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 35 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 36 Provision of biometric information at ports in Scotland Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am glad that the hon. Gentleman supports the powers, but I emphasise to him again that clause 21 is very much in the context of the clauses that we have just agreed. It is a more limited—not a blanket—power. It exists within the parameters that I set out in the previous debate. I emphasise again that none of the information seized in this context could be used in an asylum case; it is for the purposes of dealing with organised immigration crime. It is not for wider purposes, unless other criminality is found, in which case it becomes available and can be passed on. That will be dealt with in some clauses that are coming up. But these provisions are limited to collecting evidence and intelligence on organised immigration crime from people who have just entered the country illegally. Question put and agreed to. Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 22 Duty to pass on items seized under section 21 Question proposed , That the clause stand part of the Bill.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a bit difficult to talk about specific circumstances in a generalised way. As the hon. Gentleman will perceive, there may be some material on a phone that police or immigration officers are worried breaks the criminal law—I talked about counter-terrorism and child sexual exploitation as potential examples. That information may be passed on and the relevant authorities might decide that it was not at a criminal level—that would be the kind of occasion that the hon. Gentleman was asking me about. However, one would assume that, with the appropriate training, it would be fairly obvious whether something would be a worry for the purposes of counter-terrorism or child sexual abuse, and police forces could understand whether they have an obligation to try to prevent criminal activity of a category other than that for which the phone was originally seized. Once we begin to seize phones for narrow purposes, we have to make certain that passing on that information is lawful, and that is the purpose of the clause. Question put and agreed to. Clause 22 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 23 Powers to access, copy and use information stored on relevant articles Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  This group includes clauses 32 and 33, which provide for safeguards with respect to the customers and trailer registration information-sharing provisions, which we have just agreed will stand part of the Bill, as well as providing clarity about the meanings of terms within those clauses. Clause 32 makes general provision about the disclosure of information with respect to clauses 27 to 31. That is information held by HMRC in connection with its customs functions, as set out in clauses 27 to 29, and the DVLA’s trailer registration information in clauses 30 to 31. The clause does two things. First, it clarifies that clauses 27 to 31 do not limit how information may be disclosed outside of the scope of this legislation. It does not tie the hands of a named party to disclosing information subject only to the regime established here if another information gateway exists. Secondly, it clarifies that nothing in clauses 27 to 31 authorises disclosure where it would contravene UK data protection or investigatory powers legislation. In deciding on that, the clauses are to be taken into account. Clause 32 neither treads upon other legal regimes to disclose information outside of the scope of this legislation nor permits anything that would fall foul of existing statutory safeguards—a perfect, balanced approach. Clause 33 makes provision for the interpretation of clauses 27 to 31—the terms used, their scope and limits. First, it defines the meanings of certain terms through direct definition and in reference to other legislation. Secondly, it seeks to capture all UK police forces and bodies that might be the end users of the information, referring to a “UK authorised person” and a “UK authorising officer” for the purposes of clause 30, and defining what it means in this clause. The use of the terms “UK authorising officer” and “the person under whose direction and control the constable…is” avoids reliance on references to chief constable, commissioner and chief officer, because those terms have prescribed legal meanings that exclude the commanders of the very important ports police and the even more important Mersey Tunnels police, which rely on other ranks to command. That ensures that the definitions apply to everybody, whatever the force. The ports forces and the Mersey Tunnels police are an extremely important part of defending the border, for obvious reasons. For “UK authorised person”, the term constable, which includes special constable, is used. The clause also refers to “other person who is under the direction and control of a person who has the direction and control of a body of constables”. Such is the poetry of legislative diction, but lawyers know exactly what that means. Instead of police civilian staff, or similar terms with prescribed meanings, we have that rather long and convoluted explanation, which includes everybody. That is because not all forces employ police staff subject to employment contracts. Some also use police volunteers. The MOD police uses civil servants in such roles, while the Police Service of Northern Ireland has powers to use civil servants separately from employed police staff. Use of “other person” accommodates all these cases, so it is all-encompassing, and I hope we have not missed anybody out. Thirdly—this applies only to the trailer data—we have worked with the Crown dependencies and Gibraltar to identify persons undertaking statutory functions equivalent to their UK border security and law enforcement counterparts. We have defined them as a non-UK authorised person and specified them in a table along with the authorising officers. Finally, the clause establishes a regulation-making power for the Secretary of State to define the meaning of specified purposes related to policing to ensure that the data requirements are met today and can be updated from time to time as operational requirements evolve. Such an extension would be subject to consultation with policing bodies across the UK, Scottish Ministers and the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland, and it would require the affirmative resolution of both Houses. With those reassurances, I hope members of the Committee will be happy to support clauses 32 and 33.