Sir Iain Duncan Smith
MP for Chingford and Woodford Green · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I raise the cases of Ryan Cornelius and Jimmy Lai—both United Kingdom citizens—to the attention of the Foreign Secretary, who I welcome to his position. Ryan Cornelius has been incarcerated for 19 years—trumped-up charges by a corrupt regime that is supporting a war in Sudan at the moment.”
“Has the Secretary of State been made aware of the case of Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong resident who is being prosecuted by the Administration in Hong Kong using the national security law?”
“A particular memory is that during the Maastricht debates, when, I have to confess, I and one or two others here were deeply rebellious, Ann lectured me from the Dispatch Box—she was in government—about how I should support the Maastricht treaty and the European Union, which rather worried me.”
“It was phenomenal, because she was so certain about the way that she was. Ann embodied something else: the passion that is necessary for us in this Chamber to make our arguments without the fear of any other person doing something to us.”
“We need to reiterate, and the Government and the Home Secretary need to specify, to all the social media companies that they must do something to close down the visceral, violent language that some people use in attacking others personally, as they did over Ann’s murder, which shocked me.”
“Friday was a funny day. I heard the news very early in the morning that Ann had died, and I was utterly surprised about that because she had seemed perfectly fit the last time I saw her, so I gave my condolences and spoke about it on the radio.”
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“Those rights have been completely decimated in Hong Kong. The interesting part is that Jimmy Lai has been prosecuted in four separate sets of criminal proceedings arising from his peaceful participation in the high-profile pro-democracy protests in 2019 and 2020, which were organised by civil liberties groups. His crime, therefore, is to have attended the protests; that alone, apparently, is the key. The thing is that he has already been prosecuted and found guilty. One of the charges against him was eventually dismissed on appeal—others were upheld—but he had already served his sentence when that happened. He now faces even more serious charges. He has faced spurious prosecution on charges of fraud, which is why his equipment was seized.”
“He has already been forced to lose his company, and the assets of Apple Daily have been seized. It is unprecedented and could not happen here in the United Kingdom. Here is the point: Hong Kong is still meant to be a common-law area, but it cannot be a common-law area if people can have their assets seized on charges that have not yet gone through the courts. It is a peculiarity that we go on pretending, as do some of our justices who serve out there. It is no longer really a common-law jurisdiction because it has the national security law over it. People such as Jimmy Lai will now suffer under the national security law without any redress or protection, as would normally be the case here in the United Kingdom, for example, where English common law protects our normal and natural rights.”
“I had the privilege of meeting the international team of lawyers who are attempting to defend him, even though they have now, appallingly, been barred from Hong Kong by the Chinese authorities, such is their approval. Nevertheless, I congratulate his team on the huge efforts they are making around the world to draw attention to the plight of a man whose only crime is to cry freedom for all those he lives with. The point about Jimmy Lai’s case is the reality of the change in Hong Kong. The Chinese authorities have trashed the Sino-British agreement that protected people’s rights in Hong Kong as a special case, once it was all agreed. That agreement is an international treaty. The problem we have is that the authorities can now proceed against people such as Mr Lai for sedition and other appalling charges.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Ms Ali. Others wish to speak so I will try to keep my comments brief. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) on securing this vital debate. We should hold such debates regularly because there is so much to be done in this policy area. British citizens carry British passports, and those British passports have a clear statement at the front that none should let or hinder those who hold that passport, yet too often we find ourselves apologising and running around that major statement at the front of the passport. I want to focus carefully on the case of Jimmy Lai.”
“We need to say: “If you are a British passport holder—and, most importantly, a British citizen—then you have the protection of this United Kingdom, which is supposed to believe in human rights and freedom.””
“I am very grateful that my hon. Friend intervened, because I agree, of course, with everything he said. He and I are sanctioned; in our case, it is for raising the genocide in Xinjiang, which is another case altogether. I agree with my hon. Friend about Jimmy Lai. I will come back to Jimmy Lai, but I want first to say something more widely about the many British citizens who languish abroad. I am afraid that we too often find reasons and excuses to believe that behind the scenes we can somehow do something that will help them without raising the fact that they are British citizens and therefore, under international law, they require full consular access and rights. I simply say that that is a mindset that we need to get out of.”
“Proclaim it from the rooftops that the British Government stand for freedom and human rights, that when a British passport holder and British citizen is incarcerated, we will move heaven and earth and demand that that individual receives our full support, and that there is no way on earth that the normal access to justice will be blocked, for freedom must prevail.”
“We have sanctioned nobody in Hong Kong since the start of this saga. Why are we not sanctioning them? Why are we so worried about what they might say or do? If it is to get their help in stopping the Russians in the war, then they are busily supplying them with weapons, parts and all sorts of stuff at the moment. When it comes to net zero, there is nothing zero about their net. It is off the charts, and we are the ones who will pick up the pieces. To end, I simply say this to my hon. Friend the Minister: please, please, please defend a British citizen.”
“I again call on my Government: please, just get to your feet today, if you might, and say that we believe that Jimmy Lai is a British citizen and a British passport holder, full stop. We do not need to debate it, we just need to agree it. I therefore claim that that is the problem. The UN has made recognitions. The United States has recognised Jimmy Lai as a British citizen. The European Union has recognised him as a British citizen. The only country that I am aware of that does not recognise him as an out-and-out British citizen is—why, that would be the United Kingdom. For some reason, we have reticence. When the Chinese Government trashed the Sino-British agreement, the Americans sanctioned 12 of the most senior people responsible—and the same with Xinjiang, by the way, when they sanctioned something like that many as well.”
“He has only had a British passport. He is a British citizen, under British law and British protection, and he has appealed for that protection. His own defence counsels have reiterated their inability to mount a proper defence because they cannot get access to him, and now they have been barred from ever seeing him because they were too much trouble and were causing problems. I say this again: every time we say that Jimmy Lai is a dual national, it plays into the hands of the Chinese authorities, for they know that they can claim rights over his position as a dual national that they do not possess. He languishes as a result, because they do not recognise other nationalities, so they do not allow consular rights of access. Here is a big problem for us.”
“It is not something that we get given; it is our right, and I am standing up for it.” Here is what I want to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister, who is going to defend the Government’s position, and I use my words carefully. I noticed that the Foreign Secretary has used this phrase—we had this debate recently, and we did not reach an agreement, so I am going probe that lack of agreement further. He said in connection with his conversations with the Chinese Government that they “deliberately target prominent pro-democracy figures, journalists and politicians in an effort to silence and discredit them.” So far, so good. He continued: “Detained British dual national Jimmy Lai is one such figure. I raised his case”. Can I just pause there? Jimmy Lai is not a dual national. He has never had a Chinese passport.”
“Well, I would not be against it, but if the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not go into that now. I am sure she can make her case on that, and I shall be happy to discuss it with her later. I want to use this opportunity to return to a human being who is now likely—as he must believe, given the way the Chinese authorities are working—never to see the light of day again. He will never see his son or his family ever again, because he took the brave choice: to stay. He did not run away. All those people who have left, quite legitimately, have had their bank accounts frozen and their pension funds frozen illegally—it goes on. But Jimmy Lai stands like a beacon in the middle of this to say, “No. No further. We will not put up with this. Freedom is our right.”
“May I ask my hon. Friend something very clearly? The question was: do the British Government recognise Mr Lai as a British citizen and passport holder? The answer came back that he is a dual national. The Chinese Government say that he is a dual national and do not recognise it, so what do the British Government say? Is he a British citizen and a British passport holder? That was the question.”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend to the Dispatch Box. I want to ask one simple question: will no Afghans, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude and honour, be made homeless during the course of this process? I also want to ask, peculiarly, whether he has seen the remarks of our right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) in Afghanistan, in which he referred to Afghanistan as peaceful and stable, and said that we should welcome that. I saw that an Afghan woman who will remain nameless promptly wrote on his Twitter: “Shocked. Afghan women have been thrown to the wolves, and that is referred to as peace.” Does the Minister agree that it is not a very welcome statement to have made given the terrible time that those women have had and the persecutions that have taken place in Afghanistan?”
“With respect, Madam Deputy Speaker, this statement was made in Afghanistan and it was relevant to this Chamber. It has been impossible to contact my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East, but I hope, respectfully, that I have the right to reference his statement, because it has a bearing on today’s ministerial statement.”
“I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. I believe that the Bill should go through, as we have to do something about the deaths in the channel, which is an important moral purpose. I bring my right hon. Friend back to Lord Randall’s amendment on modern slavery. We agree quite a lot on this issue, and the Government have said that they will do stuff in guidance, so Lord Randall has taken the words spoken by my right hon. Friend at the Dispatch Box and put them on the face of the Bill—this amendment does exactly what my right hon. Friend promised the Government would do in guidance. The Government have not issued the guidance in detail, which is why the amendment was made. Why would we vote against the amendment today when my right hon. Friend’s words and prescriptions are now on the face of the Bill?”
“The point that my right hon. Friend made earlier is that, somehow, those people will be able to get into the UK and make a false claim. However, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 already provides for that, so anyone found to have made a false claim will be disqualified, and disqualified quite quickly. The critical thing is to prosecute the traffickers. That way, we can stop them trafficking more people on the boats. My worry is that this provision will put off many people from giving evidence and co-operating with the police for fear that they may still be overridden and sent abroad while they are doing it and then be picked up by the traffickers. Does he give any credence to the fear that this may end up reducing the number of prosecutions of traffickers as a result?”
“I just want to make it clear that under the new regulations, the Secretary of State can still feasibly decide that, even if someone is co-operating, they do not need to remain in the UK for that. That is the critical bit: they live under the fear that they can be moved somewhere else to give that evidence. Does the Minister not agree that that will put a lot of people off giving evidence?”
“I urge the Prime Minister, if at all possible, to make it a priority to talk to the US Government and try to get them to release the right equipment that would allow the Ukrainians to make those assaults in the right way, not losing so many lives.”
“I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement. I returned from Ukraine in the last few days, where I was quite close to the frontline working with a charity. The one thing that I must tell the Prime Minister is that the people of Ukraine are enormously grateful for the leadership that he and the UK have shown within NATO. They never stop telling us how much they welcome the UK’s leadership in this matter. While I was there, the Ukrainians were very clear that in their assaults, their biggest problem is that they are losing many men trying to clear the minefields. They do not have the right equipment; in fact, at night, they go forward with bayonets trying to get to the mines—it is shocking to see.”
“After the lack of support for Jimmy Lai—who is a British citizen, not a joint national, and the Government will not simply say that—do not the Government agree that our approach to joint nationality now needs to change? We need to be clear that British citizens have the right to be protected by us. It is time we stopped worrying about upsetting the Chinese Government, and started defending those who are in our protection and representing British citizens properly. It is time to act, not come here to make fake statements.”
“Will the Foreign Secretary finally meet Nathan Law, Finn Lau and Chris Mung, the three people the FCDO have refused to meet throughout the whole time they have been here escaping the clutches of the security forces in Hong Kong? Why will it not meet them? Will the Government now sanction John Lee, the chief executive of Hong Kong? America has sanctioned something like 10 officials in Hong Kong. We were the ones who jointly ran the place and we have sanctioned zero people. Let us get something going here to show them what is going on. Will the Government tell us whether they are able to block Interpol red notices for Hongkongers from third countries? That is vital—they are scared stiff about what will happen to them if they move anywhere.”
“I must say it is quite ironic that this morning I was granted a UQ about this very issue, only to find minutes later that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office had decided it had a statement to make. I assumed it was going to say something really important, but I should have known better. It has taken 11 days for the Foreign Office to come to the Dispatch Box—11 days after the bounties were placed on the heads of eight people, three of whom are here in the United Kingdom. Nathan Law’s family had their house raided and were taken into the police station. I do not know how much more we need to know about what is going on in Hong Kong and the abuses to take some action. I have some very simple questions to ask my right hon. Friend.”
“States are obliged under international law to take all necessary and proportionate steps to bring an end to a breach of peremptory norms of international law. That is important, because it sets the tone for why we may look at this carefully.”
“There are a number of routes around the problem of sovereign immunity in relation to claims against Russia for its conduct in the war and an attempt to obtain access to those assets. Customary international law permits the imposition of sanctions and restraint of assets in furtherance of international peace and security and legitimate foreign policy objectives. That means that, if asset-freezing measures are failing to achieve those aims, it would seem—this is important—very permissible in principle for measures of seizure to be adopted as a necessary and proportionate next step. They are not ruled out; they are by a natural extension. We must view international law as a movable process that is not set in stone. It has always been capable to shift international law by what nations agree. This is an important, feasible point.”
“We have frozen the private assets of some oligarchs and we have frozen the Russian national Government’s assets here in the UK, in America, in Canada and in various other nations through their markets. It is quite an interesting debate, though. We can certainly seize private assets, although even that has been debated—but it is quite clear that under international law it is wholly feasible for us to do so—but the real debate begins when it comes to very extensive Russian national assets that are now just sitting there. How can we deal with those? It is not the case that doing this immediately opens the door to the Chinese and others to seize our assets should they wish to. There are a number of arguments, which I will quickly run through.”
“The good news, of course, is that this House has not been divided on any of it. The House has sent a strong signal that Parliament stands by those in Ukraine and by the Government’s actions in trying to support them. That is very important because it is not always the case; in America, it is not necessarily the case at the moment. This Parliament has stood head and shoulders among most others, and it is because of that that we have been able to lead in terms of equipment, support, and recommendations with regards to NATO. The UK is influential in these matters and long may it remain so. I return to the question raised by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill: how do we deal with Ukraine’s aftermath? Right now, there is a debate taking place about frozen assets.”
“It commits them to agree together to take action as they deem “necessary”. Simply put, it is quite important that it is not an absolute: the declaration of a war against one is a war against all is then followed by actions as deemed necessary in nations. That means that, by and large, we will probably come together and do that, but it does not mean that we would have to be at war in Ukraine. We could have offered that relationship, and reading the article tells me that that is the case. I commend the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in all this, as I commend the UK’s leadership. The beauty is that the Government and Prime Ministers have led the way on the issue in so many ways, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex mentioned.”
“In that context, I am slightly sorry that NATO was not able to send Ukraine a stronger signal about its future with regards to NATO. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex in that I applaud much of what the NATO-Ukraine Council did and think it is an excellent start, but I think we could have been more positive. America and Germany particularly stood in the way of the general mood of the council to offer more to Ukraine. I know that we probably could not have brought Ukraine in immediately, but everyone harped on about article 5 being the problem because it committed people to go to war. It does no such thing, by the way; it is always worth reading these things before pronouncing on them. Article 5 does not commit the nations in NATO to go directly to war.”
“I am not saying I was ahead of anyone else, but I remember saying, “How many of us here are really worried about the fact that there is an agreement now granting the right for Russia to sit on territory that it has invaded and occupied?” Everybody shrugged slightly and said, “Well, there’s not much we can do about it.” That, of course, was the signal to Putin that we were not prepared to stand up. That first phase only established for him the entirety of his project and its feasibility, and then there was the constant supply of weapons and the terrible shooting down of the airliner. Those were all constant steps, telling us the direction and that he was testing us. Every time he tested us, he succeeded: we backed down and did nothing. The result has been this final full invasion—or attempted invasion—of Ukraine.”
“But in fact, the more we gave him, the more he determined on and we ended up in a war. Appeasement did not work. It does not work here. And 60 million people died directly as a result of our failure to understand that, when dictators tell us what they are about to do, it is always good to recognise that they are actually sending us a signal, not wishing for something else. That has happened here with Russia. Russia made it very clear what it was going to do, right the way from South Ossetia to the invasion of Crimea and the Donbas. These were very clear first steps in telling us that Greater Russia was on the move and was an objective of Putin, not just an idea. On the Minsk agreements, I remember sitting in Cabinet on this.”
“Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, it is hugely welcome that NATO membership has now expanded on the northern frontier. That is very important. It sends a strong message to Russia. Russian aggression has always been there below the surface. Sometimes it boiled over into remarks, but we always ignored it. The tendency of democracies and believers in freedom, freedom of speech and human rights is, sadly, too often to deal with countries on the basis of how they wish they were, rather than on the basis of what they are telling us what they are and what they will do. It happened in the 1930s. We ignored the nature of “Mein Kampf” and Hitler’s clear objectives, which he laid out endlessly. We kept saying that only one more step would satisfy that dictator and that he would be fine; it would not be a problem.”
“I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on securing this debate and on having spoken so clearly and passionately. It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). As he knows, we have been following each other for some time over the past few years—actually I wish to rephrase that; this is not a stalking issue, but it could be seen to be something similar to that in a political context. It is good to follow him on this particular subject because he speaks a lot of common sense. I wish to go back to the last section of his remarks, which deal with seizure and the debate that is going on about that. First, though, in response to the opening remarks of my hon.”
“I will not say exactly what is required, but I must talk to the Government about what they could do. Ukraine also faces conscription issues. The reality is that Ukraine must win this war, but it needs us to be literally, as Roosevelt once said, the “arsenal of democracy”. It is for us who are not on the frontline to supply those who are, so that they may achieve their goal of victory. With victory comes the second phase of reparations and restoration. We must be in that right to the finish, for if Ukraine fails first in the war, or fails subsequently in the peace, we will carry the blame for it, and rightly so. We will never be forgiven. I simply say to my right hon. Friend at the Dispatch Box, “This is our war. We must win it with them, or else we will all lose.””
“They are running short of artillery ammunition, not because we do not want to give it to them, but because so many of us do not have enough artillery ammunition to give them right now, having placed contracts only recently. America, by and large, has many more stockpiles than we do, but it is a fact of life that if we wish to avoid war, we must prepare for it, and we simply have not prepared for it over the years to the extent we needed to. The Ukrainians need that support. They need training; many of their soldiers get two or three weeks’ training and then they are on the frontline. I swear to God, having been a soldier myself, that it takes a long time to understand proper fieldcraft, and the less someone knows, the more likely they are to be wounded or killed, because they will take the wrong decisions.”
“There is no beating about the bush: if Ukraine fails on this, we all fail, and the repercussions, as the right hon. Gentleman said, will be terrible. Ukraine’s war is already our war, whether we give it membership of NATO or not. It is our war. We started that when, much to Putin’s shock, we stood by what we said we would do. The war in Ukraine has exposed our own failure to understand what war fighting really means. The truth is that almost all of us in NATO have abandoned the idea of the sheer extent of a full-scale war. When I talked to the Ukrainian soldiers, the amount of ammunition they told me they use on a daily basis is astonishing. We have forgotten that, so we do not have stockpiles appropriate to fighting war, and we have to replenish those in double-quick time, because they need that ammunition.”
“People’s faces really lift when they see this peculiarly quixotic British crowd—who seem impervious to the idea that they are within the range of shell shot—having fun; it lifts their spirits and brings them great hope. The thing I discovered while I was out there, and the one thing I know from having served, is that war is terrible. War is horrendous. War hurts those who are not directly involved in it—more, perhaps, than those who are. It is a terrible, terrible affair, to be avoided at almost all costs, except when justice must prevail. However, talking to the military and to some of the guys I saw down there near the front about their problems and issues, I must say to the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill that we still have so much more to do. Ukraine is the frontline of NATO.”
“I will conclude by mentioning, as I did in a previous question to the Prime Minister, that I came back a few days ago from Ukraine. It was a privilege to be there, working with a remarkable charity that I have now supported twice in Ukraine, called Siobhan’s Trust, which—in a classically British kind of way—just set off when Russia invaded Ukraine and went towards the danger. The people from that charity have been feeding those dispossessed of their properties and fleeing the war. They moved into Ukraine and have now moved down near the frontline, and they feed people there from pizza trucks. They have made over 1 million pizzas for people in Ukraine, and they produce joy and hope in people’s hearts when they are there, as they wear what they call Ukrainian kilts and they put the boombox on.”
“This is another route that allows us to sanction Russia; if they fail to meet their requirements under the sanction, we simply seize their existing assets in balance with the sanctioning that was necessary. Overall, for those and many other reasons, the details of which I will not go through now, I think there is more scope for sanctioning. It was Lord Bingham who said that the public policy consideration that had greatest claim on the loyalty of the law—this is really important—was that where there was a wrong, there should be a remedy. We must always be governed by that in law. That is why I believe it is wholly feasible for us now to start the process by which we may undertake the pathway to the potential seizure or subsequent seizure of Russian assets for reparations.”
“The UN General Assembly has already adopted a resolution calling on Russia to pay reparations, and there is no reason why regional bodies such as the EU or the Council of Europe—not just NATO, but other bodies that could come together and do this—could not adopt specific resolutions providing a pathway to compensation and enforcement. That point was also made by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill. Frankly, there would appear to be no obstacle in international law to a state that imposes sanctions on Russian assets making it a condition for release of those sanctions that the Russian state honour any award made by the International Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights.”
“Although the leadership of the UN Security Council is foreclosed because of Russia’s power of veto, there could be sufficient development to allow adjustment of the boundaries of state immunity in customary international law to allow enforcement of such international awards. For example, international law permits state assets to be frozen without any international court’s adjudication. We did not need permission for it; we did it. The reason it is done is because an action has taken place. International law could be developed to allow seizure pursuant to such adjudication.”
“I agree; we are probably all going to agree. We have talked about the military alliance, but now we are in the realms of the economic alliance, because that is really where we win the peace. We may yet win the war, but that is no good if we leave behind a shell of a country that is incapable of operation, democracy or even economic wellbeing. Winning the peace is as vital, and we need to be planning for it now; they did that during the second world war. It is worth reminding ourselves that by the end of that war, they were very clear about what they were going to do. Whether it is NATO, an alliance, the G7 or whoever, it is important that we form a bloc on these matters and agree, although I know there is a little resistance to that elsewhere. Furthermore, I believe that international law is not fixed, but is capable of development.”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her comments, but I want to test this further. Are the Government reviewing carefully whether those frozen assets could be seized and used for reparations, or do they consider that that is not feasible and therefore are not doing anything about it?”
“Forgive me—my right hon. Friend is being generous with her time. It suddenly struck me that a year ago, when the blockade was on and Ukraine could not get the grain out, there was serious discussion, even at NATO level, that in response it might be feasible—and that this could be made known to Putin—that if Russia failed to allow that grain to go through peacefully, it could be convoyed through by members of NATO, but not as a NATO exercise. Are the Government keeping that possibility open? It might be a good idea to let Putin know that it may well be possible to convoy those ships from Odessa through to the wider world.”
“Is the Foreign Office seriously thinking about that as a very clear position at this stage?”
“Again, I apologise for breaking the Minister’s train of thought, but can I take her back to a comment I made earlier? It is believed categorically, whatever else we do about the seizure of assets, that it is wholly feasible for the alliance, or each country in turn, to agree to say to Russia, whenever we end hostilities, that what is owed by Russia is x amount, that we have frozen x plus whatever amount, and that we will hold that amount frozen until Russia delivers what is required of it in reparations for the rebuilding and reconstitution of Ukraine. Failing any assistance on that, we will seize those assets as a result of its failure to pay what is agreed to be the reparation bill. That is completely feasible within international law and does not require any great change.”
“There is now a presumption that they do not need to be here at all, other than if there is some evidence that somehow they do, whereas before it was that in order to get that evidence, they do need to be here. Why are we knocking out the amendment, rather than amending it and specifying which categories are exempt? He runs the risk of people not giving evidence and not co-operating with the police, and us not getting prosecutions. If they are going to be cleared out of the UK while giving evidence—this is the point—the reality is that they will stop doing so, because they will be in danger of being picked up by the traffickers again outside the UK. Will he therefore rethink this and put something on the face of the Bill to define those who are exempt?”
“There are two elements here. First, the whole system can be massively speeded up, which is a fact of the NRM, straightaway. That was an obligation I was meant to have been given in the previous Bill, but it was never brought into the guidance. But the main point here is that nothing that happens outside the UK can be evidenced on this particular point. We are talking about the Minister’s fear that people are departing to within the UK and then subsequently making a claim. The real problem with the Bill right now—he knows I have concerns about this—is that much of the prosecution process against the traffickers can take place only because of the evidence given by those who have been trafficked. On Report, the presumption in the Bill suddenly changed dramatically—it was done without any notice.”
“I was given that assurance on the other Bill in December. No guidance emerged subsequently so he will forgive me, having sat in Government myself, if I do not always take the word of the Government absolutely as a categorical assurance. The only way we can get this is by doing something on the face of the Bill. The amendment, as amended, would really help enormously to reassure people and achieve the Government’s objective, which is more prosecutions and fewer boats.”
“I welcome some of the moves the Government have made and I support the principles of what the Bill is trying to do. However, this is a really significant problem of the Government cutting off their nose to spite their face. The positive we have is that when victims give evidence and a prosecution takes place, it cuts down the likelihood that traffickers will be allowed to traffic boats across. When that is turned around, it contradicts the purpose of the Bill. The point I made to the Minister earlier was that the sudden change to the presumption power of the Secretary of State is really where the problem arises. Surely the way to deal with that is not through the guidance mechanism, but to ensure, on the face of the Bill, that that presumption is restricted, and clearly restricted. He talks about the intention of the guidance.”