Report - Legislative Scrutiny: Border
Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
Following legislative scrutiny, the Joint Committee on Human
Rights has called on the Government to make amendments to the
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights welcomes the overall aims of
the Bill to deter organised crime and prevent the loss of life at
sea. However, it calls for a number of amendments to ensure that
it better respects human rights protections and the UK's
obligations to international treaties.
The Bill includes new offences relating to immigration
crime. These offences risk being applied too broadly, the
Joint Committee warns, putting refugees, victims of people
smuggling and modern slavery at risk of being criminalised,
rather than the smugglers. It calls for the scope of these new
offences to be narrowed and stronger safeguards applied so that
they target the perpetrators and not those seeking safety.
Publishing the report, Chair of the Joint Committee on Human
Rights, Lord said:
“It is right that the Government does all it can to ensure a
legislative framework is in place to help eradicate this terrible
and dangerous criminality. But at present, the scope of the
offences is too broad and the safeguards are too weak.
“The Bill needs to target those who are profiting from organised
immigration crime. The people they are exploiting need to be
protected, but at present there is a risk that the most
vulnerable are caught by these new offences.”
“Our report proposes a number of amendments to tighten up the
Bill, to ensure it respects the UK's human rights obligations and
provides clarity and oversight of the powers allowed. It has the
right intent but it needs to be watertight.”
Key conclusions and recommendations include:
- The new offences should be narrowed and the defences should
be strengthened to ensure they target the perpetrators of
organised immigration crime and not those seeking safety.
- There needs to be greater clarity on how powers to seize and
retain electronic information relating to unlawful immigration
would be used in practice.
- Clauses in the Bill that would allow the transfer of personal
biometric data to other nations and international organisations
remove vital data protections and should be scrapped.
- Some of the clauses in the Illegal Migration Act should be
repealed.
- The report calls for restrictions on the imposition of
conditions on persons with limited leave, such as electronic
monitoring, geographical restrictions and curfews, so that they
are applied only in cases of a serious threat to national
security, public safety or cases involving serious crime.
- The Committee calls from a more stringent test to be applied
to the use of electronic monitoring as part of Serious Crime
Prevention Orders.
