|
Mr. Malins: The Minister may be coming to this point, but I wonder whether she has had a chance in the past couple of weeks to get hold of and look at the letter that I am told the Foreign Secretary wrote to the United States about their similar proposals, in which I understand he said, although I may be wrong, that they would cause severe disruption and be very difficult from our point of view. Has there been liaison on that between the Home Office and the Foreign Office?
Beverley Hughes: There has been liaison, but our issue with the US about the termination of their waiver scheme, in so far as there is an issue, is not about the principle but about the timescale in which it is being imposed. Although we shall include a biometric identifier in all new passports—we are piloting it now—we do not envisage being able to do that universally until mid-2005, whereas the date for the start of the cessation of the waiver scheme that normally applies to UK citizens is 26 October this year. Therefore, there would be a window of six to eight months in which we would not be able to comply. We are talking to the United States about being more flexible about the timescale, although not about the principle. We agree with the principle, and I think that many other countries will go down that road.
The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) asked whether we could be more robust. In the medium term we can and will be more robust. We are instituting something called the e-borders proposal, which will enable us to set up, through the authority-to-carry scheme, an advance passenger information scheme—the automatic transmission of passenger information in real time. However, that can only be done electronically and it will take some time to put the electronic infrastructure in place. The ID card will also help UK citizens, when we have the ability to read cards quickly.
In the medium to longer term, all countries are going down that route, with authority to carry and advance passenger information, but the electronic infrastructure is necessary. The provision will enable us, in a more low-tech manual way, to have advance
Column Number: 402
passenger information, or at least the information accompanying passengers as they fly. However the hon. Gentleman is right: the longer-term solution is to be able to do that electronically. Then it can be done all the time for all routes in a blanket way without the impact on carriers that it would have if we sought advance passenger transmission for all journeys.
Hon. Members rightly had a long list of questions. If I have not covered any points, I hope that they will allow me to pick them up later and write to them. I hope that I have reassured them on some of the detail.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 7
Interpretation of Refugee Convention
'(1) In Article 31 of the Refugee Convention—
''directly'' means without transit through or landfall (whether by land, sea or air) in a safe country.
(2) In subsection (1)—
''the Refugee Convention'' means the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees done at Geneva on 28th July 1951 and its protocol;
''safe country'' include the countries listed in paragraph 2 of Schedule 3 to this Act and such other countries as the Secretary of State may designate.'.—[Mr. Turner.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr. Turner: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
10 am
The new clause deals with something that I confess I did not know was the case until my hon. Friend the Member for Woking mentioned it from the Front Bench during one of our earlier sittings. The word ''directly'' in the refugee convention does not mean what most people would assume it means. Article 31 refers to
''refugees . . . coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened''.
It seems to me that the natural meaning of ''directly'' is ''without making landfall in another place''. Yet, for some reason—I have not checked why—the courts have determined that ''directly'' does not have what most of us would regard as its natural meaning, but that the meaning it carries allows asylum claimants to go through one or more countries, which may be safe countries, on their way to this country. The purpose of the new clause is to find out why the Government think that is an acceptable interpretation of the word ''directly'' in the context of article 31.
If I had done my homework a little earlier, we would be talking about the rest of the convention as well. Article 31 refers only to the application of penalties to people who have not arrived directly, and I suspect that what is far more important in the eyes of most of our constituents is eligibility for asylum when people have not arrived directly, but have come indirectly through a safe country such as France. The Minister might tell me that the usual meaning of ''directly''
Column Number: 403
applies in the case of eligibility for asylum but simply does not apply in the case of article 31. However, the new clause relates to article 31.
Obviously, to make the new clause stand up, I have had to give a definition of a safe country. It may not be perfect, but the purpose of the new clause is to probe the Minister's and the Government's thinking. If the Minister finds the existing definition unacceptable, why have the Government not sought to redefine ''directly'' in a way that most of us would find acceptable? If the Minister finds the definition acceptable, perhaps she could explain why the Government think it is acceptable that people who have left a country where they have a justifiable fear of persecution should come through a country such as Italy, France or Belgium and not claim asylum there, but then be eligible for asylum in this country, or be ineligible for penalties for arriving without documentation, or with false documentation.
Beverley Hughes: As the hon. Gentleman said, the new clause defines ''directly'' for the purposes of article 31 of the 1951 refugee convention as meaning
''without transit through or landfall . . . in''
a country listed in paragraph 2 of schedule 3, or any other country that the Secretary of State may designate. That would mean that refugees who travelled to the UK through one of those countries could, when applicable, be prosecuted, or penalised, for illegal entry into or presence in the UK, without having the option of a defence under article 31. It would not affect the assessment of the asylum claim, but it would mean that a prosecution could be brought even if someone was given refugee status, and it would mean that they would not have a defence if they had travelled through a country in which they could have claimed asylum.
I do not think that there is that much between us. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that, in the past, article 31 has been interpreted very widely by the courts, and that those refugees who have had the opportunity to claim asylum in a safe country en route to the UK should do so, and should not be able to rely on the convention as a defence for entering the UK illegally. We dealt with this matter in section 31 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, where we defined defences based on article 31 of the convention for the purposes of UK legislation. Subsection (2) provides that:
''If . . . the refugee stopped in another country outside the United Kingdom [the defence] in subsection (1) applies only if he shows that he could not reasonably be expected to be given protection under the Refugee Convention in that other country.''
I think that this approach to the definition is very similar to that proposed by the hon. Gentleman in his new clause. As far as I can see, his definition differs slightly from ours, in not providing the ''reasonable excuse'' defence for not seeking protection in a third country and in providing a definition for a ''safe third country''. There might be some situations in which that defence is appropriate—for instance, as we have seen with tragic results, if someone is locked in the
Column Number: 404
back of a lorry and transits another country, but literally cannot physically get out, that may be a reasonable excuse that we should provide for. I think that is the only sliver of difference between our definitions. I hope he will agree that the broad thrust is much the same, namely that a person can hope to benefit from the protection of article 31 only if they did not pass up an opportunity to apply in another country which they reached before arriving in the UK. I hope he will be assured that the definition that we already have in legislation is sufficient for his concerns to be met and that he will withdraw the amendment.
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): I am most grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intervene in her thoughtful response to my hon. Friend's contribution. I have listened to the entirety of this debate. Will the Minister urge her officials, or the Government as a whole, to publicise more widely what she has just said about the Government's attitude to transit asylum seekers? I think many of us as constituency MPs will be faced with inquiries from our constituents as to why a person who has travelled from, let us say, the Balkans, all the way through the European Union, has been allowed to be treated as an asylum seeker in this country. I hope that the Government will make their attitude towards this problem more widely known, because it causes much puzzlement among ordinary folk when they see the results of these arrivals.
Beverley Hughes: There are two points here. There is a great deal of work going on—not only by IND, but by parts of our security services which work with us on intelligence-gathering in operations outside the UK—trying to ensure that people in source countries understand those issues and the risks, the exploitation to which they become prey by paying people to transverse them across the continent. It might be that we can do more in that regard, but we are trying to include getting those messages across as part of our overall strategy on this.
I must clarify one point. As I think I made clear to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, the provisions in article 31 of the refugee convention do not allow a country to decline to consider a claim. Rather, it tells the member state concerned that should somebody be liable to prosecution because they have not claimed asylum, that person will not have a defence under article 31 if they have not come directly and not availed themselves of the opportunity, if they could do so, to claim in another country. It is about the offence, and penalising people; it is not about not considering somebody's claim. That is why it would technically be possible to prosecute somebody we have decided is a refugee, although many countries may not want to do that. Article 31 is about that person's defence, which they may or may not have, depending on how they got to the state concerned.
|
