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Human Rights

My Lords, I said ““flat cash”” and the noble Lord knows exactly what it means. That is the official line; I can obtain more information for him if he wants, but I wanted to put that firmly on the record. It has been agreed by the DCA finance department, so I shall say nothing more at this point. However, we are satisfied that we have good resources to take things forward. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, spoke about being a minnow; he is not. He gave a passionate and moving account of Maria. We in your Lordships’ House are all proud of our long history and tradition in wanting to provide refuge to those in need. I also think that we want and need a robust and proper system, including trying to tackle properly and appropriately issues regarding those who do not have a right to be here. It does mean rules. One of the great difficulties—which I experienced during the passage of the asylum and immigration legislation last year—is that although we want that, we can all point to exceptional cases. I make no comment on Maria, because I do not know her case; but I can think of many instances where it is very difficult to make such decisions, and I know that one of the ways is to try and sort out such cases as quickly as possible to give people certainty about the outcome—particularly when children are involved, even if that means that people are going back to another country or the country of origin. That should be done properly and appropriately. We have just considered the Bill relating to bailiff law; we are bringing together legislation that goes back, I think, to 1652 and the king’s highway. We want to stop an inconsistency of approach—bailiff law has grown up all over the place and people find aspects of it incomprehensible. Some bailiffs can go in at certain times of day, some at other times of day. All those rules are now being made consistent and all bailiffs will be regulated, which is even more important, and allowed into people’s homes only with judicial authority and under strict guidance. Intercept evidence was raised by the noble Earl, who covered a lot of terrain. We are still looking closely at that issue. There is a clear government commitment to that work, but we must recognise and protect our intercept capabilities. We are reviewing the issues and trying to see whether there is a legal model that provides the necessary safeguards that might allow intercept material to be used as evidence. He will be aware of that. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, talked about the terrible tragedy of slavery and trafficking, and I pay tribute to her work on what will be an important series of events taking place, right across government, to recognise the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. I will give a tiny plug for the National Archives, for which I am responsible also.