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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

My Lords, I am always grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for his contributions on children. I have two senses of déjà vu, if I might be slightly frivolous. The first is the number of times the noble Earl has asked the House to forgive him for what are, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, issues of critical importance, for which we would forgive him for ever for raising. That is one of his roles in life and we are grateful for it. Secondly, as the noble Earl has indicated, it was I who piloted—if that is the word—the Children’s Bill to become the Children’s Act 2004. My noble friend Lord Adonis was indeed here. He had no idea which amendment we were on. He is very busy with other issues. Had he known, I am sure that he would have stayed—he takes his responsibilities, which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton raised, extremely seriously and I know that he will read our conversations with interest. I do not want to detain the House longer than I need to, although this is important. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, has hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head. I do not suppose it will surprise any noble Lord to know that, when we came to this issue in the passage of the Children’s Bill, I for one was keen to see whether we could accept the amendment. The principle of ensuring that our children are safe, whoever they are, and particularly those who are vulnerable, is, I hope that the noble Earl will agree, as dear to my heart as it is to his. It is a fundamental part of what the Government do, through the work we have done in legislation, Every Child Matters, the bringing together of children’s issues and so on. We have sought to make children a much more central part of the way in which we approach policy and legislation. I know that that is supported on all sides; I am not making a party political point at all in saying it. But that approach is still relatively new. I looked at the consequences of trying to agree to this amendment. As the noble Earl would expect, I probed them at enormous length. I remembered that, before I had had any briefing on this issue, the noble Earl and I had talked about it and had faced the tricky issue that the noble Baroness has quite rightly raised—that if you prevent people from doing what is essentially their primary purpose, or you undermine it without meaning to, that has potentially great repercussions. We discussed earlier the critical importance of ensuring that, when people should not be here, they go back and get their children settled in the community as quickly as possible. The answer is not always to be here, by any means. It is clear, if you look at the way this would work, that if a chief immigration officer said that he wanted to return a family of failed asylum seekers, the decision could, under the amendment, be challenged in the courts on the basis that removing their access to health and education in Britain and returning them to a country where the education and healthcare may well not be of the same standard is not consistent with the duty to make arrangements to safeguard and promote children’s welfare. It is possible, legislatively, that if this were inserted it would become virtually impossible to return any family with children or any accompanied child or young person. I am not prepared to do that. I completely accept that we want to ensure that we support vulnerable children, but this is not the means to do so, because we would end up in a position where we could, in an odd way, make the situation worse for those children and young people and their families. To go back to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, about having effective Home Office policies and immigration and asylum controls, we have to have a position where, if people should not be here, be they individuals or, in this context, families, they should go. That is an important part of what we are seeking to do. As I explained to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, with whom I immensely enjoyed working on the Children’s Bill—he is a man of great integrity, who I know felt strongly and passionately about these issues—that is the basis on which I have to reject this amendment. I simply cannot put our immigration services in that position. It would be wrong to do it. That does not mean that we and they do not care about the welfare of children, but we simply cannot—by accident, as it would almost be—undermine the services in that way. I do not think that the noble Earl would wish that. It would undermine what we have and what we are seeking to do. The noble Earl knows too that I will do anything that I can to try to support his objectives of making sure that vulnerable children are adequately protected and looked after, but this is simply not the way to do it for the reasons that I have given. I hope that the noble Earl will feel able, on that basis, to withdraw the amendment.