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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

moved Amendment No. 45:"Page 29, line 4, leave out subsection (1)." The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of this amendment and Amendment No. 47, which I will speak to with it, is to knock out from the clause the references to Article 1F(c) of the refugee convention. We believe that it is wrong in principle for the Government to construe an international treaty in statute against the advice of the custodian of the treaty and without any consultation with the other 146 states that are party to it. We have objected to the progressive narrowing of the exception in Article 1F in previous legislation, and we object to the proposal in this clause to fetter the discretion of the courts to take account of all the circumstances in deciding whether a person is disqualified from the protection afforded by the convention. As your Lordships know, the UNHCR has made repeated representations to the Government on this matter, first in a letter of 10 November 2005 and then in another letter in the middle of December. I quote one paragraph from the first letter in which the UNHCR said:"““With regard to the current draft of Clause 51 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, currently before Parliament, UNHCR notes that any legislative action taken by the UK would have significant influence on the interpretation and/or application of Article 1F of the 1951 Convention by the authorities of the other 146 Contracting Parties to the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Consequently UNHCR cautions against the adoption of legislation that is aimed at interpreting one of the subsections of a provision of the Convention which is designed to be read in context and as a whole.””" I would like to know whether the Minister has had consultation with the UNHCR since that letter was written and, if so, what was the outcome of it? We have talked about consultation with many organisations in previous clauses. I can hardly think of any provision of the Bill in which it is more important for us to have engaged in consultation with—to use new Labour jargon—the ““stakeholders”” than something which affects 146 other countries and the treatment of vulnerable individuals who seek protection in any of those countries and who are to be deprived of it in this country because of the narrow interpretation that we choose to place on Article 1F. I would also draw the Minister’s attention to the memorandum sent by the UNHCR with the letter to the Home Office on 10 November. I am not going to read the whole thing as it is rather long. However, in the fifth paragraph it says:"““UNHCR’s guidance on the interpretation of the exclusion clauses in Article 1F of the Refugee Convention is set out in the attached September 2003 ‘Guidelines on International Protection: Application of the Exclusion Clauses: Article 1F of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees’. These guidelines were issued pursuant to UNHCR’s mandate under its Statute and its supervisory function under Article 35 of the 1951 Convention. They are intended to provide interpretative legal guidance for governments, legal practitioners, decision makers and the judiciary””." I hope the Minister is listening to what I am saying, because I want to ask her whether she does not think that the Government should have seriously considered the objections of the UNHCR, which are based on a longstanding interpretation of the exclusion clauses, which everybody has accepted since September 2003 when these guidelines were issued. Your Lordships will remember that the UNHCR engaged in a very thorough international consultation on the application of the convention in which, to my knowledge, our own Government took part. I do not believe that at that time the exclusion clauses in Article 1F were queried or that the guidelines were disputed. For the noble Baroness to come along and tell your Lordships that now we want to unilaterally abrogate from certain of the responsibilities, particularly the interpretation of Article 1F, in the context of the convention as a whole, is an unsatisfactory way to treat our obligations under the convention and I think breaks the spirit of our adherence to that treaty. I beg to move.