Debate contribution: Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill: Legislative Consent Motion

Debate contribution by Miss Deirdre Hargey on 23 June 2025.

MLA

Miss Deirdre Hargey

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

23 June 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill: Legislative Consent Motion

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5045949

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank the Minister for bringing the LCM to the House. The Chair of the Committee outlined the in-depth scrutiny that we tried to do at the Committee with the devolved provisions that pertain to the LCM. We also tried to engage with the Human Rights Commission and others for advice. There are a number of devolved implications, which the Minister and the Chair outlined. There are also regulations and amendments that have come forward, on which the Committee is still engaging.

I know that the Minister highlighted the fact that the LCM will enhance protections around engaging DOJ, but if clauses 30 to 33 pertain to the DVLA, what engagement will there be with the Infrastructure Minister? That is a concern that we raised, and I know that the Committee will look at that in more detail at Thursday's Committee meeting.

I put on record and highlight the fact that there is a range of excepted matters that do not fall under the Assembly's control. When you look at where the Bill initially came from, you see that it came from the Tory Party in Britain and the Rwanda policy, which is proposed to be repealed and is also a reserved matter. Key aspects of the reserved matters are draconian, and we have concerns about their human rights implications. Again, I highlight the fact that, whilst the LCM process is welcomed, huge swathes of the legislation that will have an impact here are excepted matters, and the Assembly does not have proper scrutiny of and oversight into those and cannot feed into them. We also know through Committee deliberations that the Human Rights Commission here raised concerns, particularly about the compliance of article 2 of the Windsor framework. We know that the Human Rights Commission was going to publish further information and a further detailed report on that aspect of the work. In fairness to the Human Rights Commission, it engaged with the Department. The Department made representations to the Home Office, which said that, under its human rights deliberations, there was nowhere else to go on the matter. However, we still have concerns about that area of work, particularly the impact of article 2 of the Windsor framework. The Committee and, indeed, my party highlighted concerns about the pace of the Bill. The Department also highlighted those concerns. We were concerned that it was moving at such a pace through Westminster that engagement with key partners to look at the impact of the provisions — reserved and devolved — was limited. I thank the departmental officials for their engagement with the Committee on the concerns and queries that were raised and for trying to answer those as well as they could.

453 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:50 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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