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8.45 pm
Miss Widdecombe: I am afraid that I must resist all three amendments, which will come neither as a surprise nor as a disappointment to hon. Members.
The effect of amendment No. 6 would be that designation orders could designate only one country per order, and that they would be subject to positive,not negative resolution procedure. Amendments Nos. 24
and 25 would have the same effect, except that in their case the positive procedure would apply regardless of whether a country was added to the list or taken off it.
I see no reason to resort to the affirmative procedure for designation orders. The negative procedure is used for immigration rules, so it should be appropriate for these purposes also. We also believe that the designation procedure must be sufficiently flexible to allow us to make amendments quickly--such as when a substantial increase in the number of unfounded applications from a country calls for speedy designation.
Every year, apparently compelling reasons are advanced for saying that nearly every order in new legislation should be subject to the affirmative procedure; if we took that route, the business of the House would come to a standstill. We must therefore exercise a reasonable and selective approach to the use of affirmative procedures.
A prohibition on designating more than one country in an order would be inflexible, cumbersome and unnecessary. If we designate several countries in one order, and Parliament disagrees with our judgment about just one of the countries in it, the whole order will fall. That is unlikely to happen, but if it does, an amended order could be reintroduced quickly. On all practical grounds, therefore, I urge the House to resist these amendments if they are pressed, which I hope they will not be.
Amendment negatived.
Amendment made: No. 35, in page 2, line 20, at end insert--
Miss Widdecombe:
I beg to move amendment No. 36, in page 2, line 23, leave out from 'from' to end of line 32 and insert
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment No. 8, in page 2, line 32, after 'Convention', insert
Government amendments Nos. 37 and 38.
Amendment No. 11, in clause 3, page 3, leave out lines 4 and 5.
Government amendment No. 39.
Amendment No. 12, in page 3, line 5, at end insert--
Government amendments Nos. 40 and 41.
Miss Widdecombe:
Government amendments Nos. 36 to 41 limit non-suspensive appeals against removal to a third country to cases where the third country is a member of the European Union or is another state designated by order. This fulfils an undertaking given by the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Kirkhope), in Standing Committee.
Clauses 2 and 3 will enable us to achieve the important objective of speeding up removals in third-country cases, and enhancing the effectiveness of our third-country policy. But my hon. Friend informed the Committee on 23 January that we had looked further at the problem of delays in removing asylum seekers to third countries, and had concluded that this part of the Bill could be improved.
In more than 95 per cent. of cases in which asylum is refused on safe third-country grounds, the third country to which the Secretary of State is seeking to remove the applicant is a member state of the EU, such as France or Germany.
We do not accept that applicants should be able to delay removal by disputing the safety of such countries. We have, however, concluded that there is no need to apply non-suspensive appeals to all third country cases, and we propose to limit them to member states of the European Union in the first instance.
Government amendment No. 37 provides an order-making power that will enable us at a later stage to extend non-suspensive third-country appeals to selected non-EU countries. Those would be countries with proven safe asylum procedures, such as Switzerland, Canada and the United States of America. The Government amendments provide an in-country right of appeal where the third country is not a member of the EU and is not being designated by order as a country to which an applicant can be removed on third-country grounds without a suspensive right of appeal.
I propose to resist amendments Nos. 8, 11 and 12.
In the case of amendment No. 8, it is an accepted principle that the first safe country that an applicant reaches should be the state responsible for considering his asylum claim. Amendment No. 8 would prevent us from removing an asylum seeker to that safe country if he could demonstrate some sort of link with the United Kingdom, whatever that link might be.
Our background paper on third-country removals makes it clear that we operate discretionary policies that specify the circumstances in which an applicant will not be removed on third-country grounds. Those include a family ties concession, but those considerations must remain discretionary. In the great majority of cases, we exercise discretion in the applicant's favour, but it is not hard to imagine circumstances in which it would be appropriate to remove an applicant on third-country grounds even though that applicant had ties with the United Kingdom. A good example would be if the applicant had a criminal record. We believe that it is perfectly proper to return such an asylum seeker to the safe third country.
Amendment No. 8 goes much wider than family ties. It even refers to other links, including linguistic, cultural or historical links. It seems to envisage that we should not remove anyone on third-country grounds if he can so much as speak English.
The amendment also refers to the Dublin convention, but that convention does not contain any provision which states that it would be more appropriate for the United Kingdom to consider an asylum claim if the applicant has historical, linguistic or cultural ties. Article 9 of that convention simply allows for member states to exercise their discretion, as I have explained we do, on humanitarian grounds, in particular on family or cultural grounds, at the request of another member state. The Dublin convention fully recognises that that is properly a matter for discretion.
On amendment No. 11, in cases in which the appeal is non-suspensive, we do not favour allowing it to be lodged while the applicant is still in the United Kingdom. The whole point of non-suspensive appeals is to allow quick removal. If we allowed the application to be initiated while the applicant was still in the United Kingdom, we would risk delays in removal. Appellants would press for time to consult legal advisers or to collate evidence before lodging their appeal.
The approach that we have adopted has the advantage of speed and clarity, and will substantially reduce the scope for challenges and delays. We shall provide in the appeal procedure rules that the time limit for lodging an appeal starts from the time of removal.
The provision to prevent an out-of-country, third-country appeal from being lodged while the applicant is still in the United Kingdom mirrors subsections 13(3) and 16(2) of the Immigration Act 1971, which already provides for appeals from abroad on non-asylum grounds. So there is nothing especially new in our proposal that non-suspensive appeals should be brought only after removal.
'(7) In this paragraph--
'immigration officer' means an immigration officer appointed for the purposes of the 1971 Act;
'passport', in relation to an appellant, means a passport with photograph or some other document satisfactorily establishing his identity and nationality or citizenship.'.--[Mr. Kirkhope.]
'the United Kingdom if--
(a) the Secretary of State has certified that, in his opinion, the conditions mentioned in subsection (2A) below are fulfilled;
(b) the certificate has not been set aside on an appeal under section 3 below; and
(c) except in the case of a person who is to be sent to a country or territory to which subsection (2B) below applies, the time for giving notice of such an appeal has expired and no such appeal is pending.'.
'and
(d) that that person has no close family ties or other links (including linguistic, cultural or historical links) which would render it more appropriate for his claim to be
'(2A) Where an appeal under this section is upheld, the person who made the appeal should be allowed to re-enter the United Kingdom, if he seeks to do so.'.
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