Skip to main content
Menu

Lords Committee raises concerns over lack of essential information on immigration law change to declare India and Georgia as ‘safe states’

Friday 1 December 2023

In its 4th Report of Session 2023–24, the cross-party House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee considered the draft Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (Amendment of List of Safe States) Regulations 2024 and raised concerns about the lack of key information on a policy intended to tackle unfounded protection and human rights claims.

The draft Regulations would add India and Georgia to the list of ‘safe states’, as defined in immigration legislation. This would mean that any asylum or human rights claim made by a national from these countries must be declared inadmissible, unless ‘exceptional circumstances’ apply.

The Committee’s report notes that several sources, including the US Department of State and the Home Office itself, have reported “significant” and “widespread” human rights abuses in these two countries. However, the Home Office stated that the tests for designating a country as safe included that “in general” there is no serious risk of persecution of nationals of that state. The Home Office argued that, despite some “isolated incidents”, these tests were met by India and Georgia.

The report raised the question of what would constitute ‘exceptional circumstances’ in the case of nationals from these countries, thus allowing their asylum or human rights claims to be considered.  The Home Office stated that guidance on this point will be published “in due course”. However, the Committee considered that the operation of ‘exceptional circumstances’ is critical to understanding and scrutinising the policy and further details should have been in the legislation or, at a minimum, the guidance should have been published alongside the instrument.

In conclusion, the report draws the draft Regulations to the special attention of the House and suggests that the House can only scrutinise these Regulations properly if the guidance is published before the debate on them takes place.

Baroness Harris of Richmond, Member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, said:

“We have often made clear that it is important to provide all supporting information at the time an instrument is laid before Parliament. In the case of these draft Regulations, the guidance on ‘exceptional circumstances’ is so critical to their operation that effective scrutiny is impossible without understanding how this aspect will work.

“More generally, we observe that there is scope for different points of view on whether India and Georgia are ‘safe states’, based on their human rights records. In the case of Georgia, we note that a significant proportion of asylum applications are granted (29% in the year to September 2022 and 16% in the year to September 2023).

“The Home Office has also not provided any clarity on whether the significant backlog of existing asylum claims from nationals of these countries will continue to be processed as previously or will be deemed inadmissible retrospectively.

“Overall, we found the explanatory material laid with the draft Regulations did not provide a clear enough picture of how they would be implemented in practice.”

Subscribe to Lords newsletter

Sign up for the House of Lords newsletter for the latest news, debates and business.

Subscribe now

Lords press office

Lords Enquiry Service and FAQs

House of Lords FAQs

The Lords Enquiry Service provides information on the role, work and membership of the House of Lords.

  • Telephone: 0800 223 0855 (Freephone) or 020 7219 3107
  • Email: hlinfo@parliament.uk
  • Text Relay: 18001 7219 3107

The telephone enquiry service is open from 10am - 5pm Monday to Thursday, and 10am - 4pm on Fridays. During recess, the hours are 10am - 1pm and 2pm - 4pm Monday to Friday.