The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)

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I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The purpose of the Bill is to strengthen UK border security, which has been weakened and undermined in recent years; to restore order to the immigration and asylum systems, which were left in chaos; and to bring in new counter-terror-style powers for our law enforcement to go after the dangerous criminal gangs that undermine our border security, that profit from putting lives at risk and that have been getting away with it for far too long.

It is a Bill to strengthen leadership and accountability around our borders, putting the Border Security Command on the statute book, and to bring in tougher powers to tackle organised immigration crime, including pursuing those involved in supply chains, preparatory acts and seizing mobile phones. It is a Bill that allows us to take stronger action on those who put the lives of others at risk at sea, that will improve intelligence gathering and sharing, and that will restore order and control to the asylum system so that we can clear the backlog.

It is a Bill to deliver on our Labour manifesto commitment to bring in counter-terrorism-style powers to increase enforcement and returns. It is part of the programme to deliver what we set out before Christmas in the Government’s plan for change—rebuilding secure borders; restoring order, control and confidence to the immigration and asylum systems; and bringing legal and illegal migration down.

Yvette Cooper

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The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I can assure him that our approach is for both immigration and asylum to apply right across the UK, recognising the importance of border security as part of that UK-wide approach.

Most people across the UK want strong border security and a properly controlled and managed asylum and immigration system, so that the UK does its bit, alongside other countries, to help those fleeing persecution, but also so that those with no right to be here are swiftly returned and the rules are respected and enforced. None of that has been happening in recent years. When this Government took office, basic rules had stopped being enforced, the asylum system had been crashed, and smuggling gangs saw the UK as an easy target. The last Conservative Government completely lost control of our borders.

Yvette Cooper

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I will give way to the hon. Member, but I inform Members that although I will take many interventions, I must make progress first.

Yvette Cooper

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Let me repeat the answer that I have just given: our immigration and asylum system applies right across the UK. I say to the hon. Member that when net migration soared under the previous Government, it did not address the labour market issues in Scotland. That is why we need a proper strategy that addresses the labour market issues, rather than always seeing migration as the answer.

The last Conservative Government completely lost control of our borders. Net migration quadrupled in the space of three years to a record high of nearly 1 million people, as overseas recruitment soared while training was cut in the UK. Immigration is important for the UK, but that is why it needs to be controlled and managed. The party that told people that it was taking back control of our borders instead just ripped up all the controls.

Six years ago, barely a handful of boats crossed the channel: 300 people arrived by small boat in 2018. Within four years that number had risen to more than 30,000—a 100-fold increase—which not only undermines our border security but puts huge numbers of lives at risks. The Conservative Government failed to act fast with France and other countries to increase enforcement and prevent the gangs from taking hold. Instead, criminals were let off and an entire criminal industry was established along our borders in just a few short years, with tragic consequences.

Yvette Cooper

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The UK must always do its bit to help those who have fled persecution. That is what we have done with Ukraine and Afghanistan, and it will continue to be important, but no one should be making this dangerous journey on a boat across the channel and being exploited by the criminal gangs that are profiting from it. They are making huge amounts of money—hundreds of millions of pounds—from putting lives at risk and undermining our border security. It should be Governments, not gangs, who decide who enters our country.

Under the last Government, asylum decision making collapsed, with a 70% drop in monthly decision making in the run-up to the election and an 80% drop in asylum interviews. The entire asylum system was crashed by their chaotic legislation, driving the backlog up at huge cost to the taxpayer, and enforcement was undermined, with a 34% drop in returns compared with the last Labour Government. Just four employers were charged with illegally employing migrant workers in the space of two and a half years, and of course, £700 million was spent on sending four volunteers to Rwanda—that programme ran for more than two years and sent just four volunteers. At the time, we said that it would have been cheaper to send those same people on a round trip to Australia on the former Prime Minister’s private helicopter. It turns out that it would have been cheaper to buy each of them a fleet of private helicopters themselves, never mind spending that money on paying for thousands more doctors, nurses or police officers, or paying to boost our border security instead.

We said in our manifesto that we would stop the chaos and return order to the system. That is what this Bill does, and it is exactly what we are doing. Since the election, we have started by ensuring that rules are respected and enforced, because immigration is important, but the system should not be misused or abused. We have transferred staff and resources from the failed Rwanda scheme and boosted returns and enforcement. The result is a 24% increase in enforced returns in our first seven months for those who have no right to be in the UK. Some 19,000 people were returned by the end of last month, including the four largest return charter flights in our country’s history, and there has been a 38% increase in illegal working raids and arrests compared with the same time period under the previous Government. New biometric kits have been rolled out, so that immigration enforcement can check fingerprints and biometric residence permits on the spot, and we are already strengthening our approach to prosecuting employers for exploitation and employment of illegal workers.

Yvette Cooper

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I should perhaps point the hon. Lady to her own Government’s record, which left us with a shocking and disgraceful backlog in the asylum system. We are now clearing that backlog so that small boat cases can now be returned, something that was not possible under her Government’s approach. They never decided any asylum cases, and as a result could not return anyone who arrived on a small boat because their system was so broken. Not only are this Government introducing stronger powers to prevent small boats arriving in the first place—something that, shockingly, Conservative Members seem to want to vote against this evening—we are clearing the backlog so that we can substantially increase returns, compared with the total failure under the previous Government.

We have established our new Border Security Command to draw together the work of the Border Force, the National Crime Agency, the police, Immigration Enforcement, the Foreign Office and the intelligence and security agencies in order to strengthen our borders. That is backed by £150 million of funding for new technology and hundreds of specialist investigators, and it has already led to major joint operations with Belgium, France, Germany, Bulgaria and Iraq, taking out smuggler gang leaders and supply chains—the criminals operate across borders, and so must we.

Since the election, we have signed new agreements with Germany, Iraq, Italy, the Calais group and the G7, and we are drawing up new, closer arrangements with France. In parallel with our new UK Border Security Command, the French Interior Minister has announced increased enforcement along the coast and a new criminal intelligence and investigations unit to drive new action against organised immigration crime.

But we need to go much further. It is worth understanding how extensive and vile this criminal industry really is. It operates from the money markets of Kabul to the hills of Kurdistan and right across Europe—through the western Balkans and across the Mediterranean. It uses false advertising on social media and hawala networks to channel the cash. There are huge supply chains of flimsy boats, weak engines and fake lifejackets that would not keep anyone afloat. There are shipping routes through Bulgaria, Italy and Spain; warehouses of boats in Germany; and organised logistics networks through Belgium and northern France.

Gangs have become increasingly violent in their determination to make as much money as possible. They are crowding more and more people into flimsy boats with women and children in the middle, so that if the boats fold or sink, they are the first to drown or be crushed. They provide the fuel in flimsy containers that leak, so that when it mixes with saltwater, it inflicts the most horrific burns.

The gangs’ latest tactic is to make people wait in freezing cold water—even in January—until a boat arrives from further along the shore to pick them up. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that at least 78 people died when attempting to cross the channel in 2024. Families have been left devastated by the loss of loved ones, the victims of a diabolical trade —the most disgraceful and immoral trade in people.

Yvette Cooper

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The Mother of the House has long had an interest in these issues and has often spoken on them. I would say that it is important for the UK to have a fair and effective asylum and immigration system. Immigration has always been an important part of the UK, but for it to be so, the rules need to be respected and enforced. We cannot allow the criminal gangs to put life at risk in that way or to undermine our border security. It is as a result of the operations of those criminal gangs that 78 people died while attempting to cross the channel in 2024 and that we have seen those quite horrific tactics.

Yvette Cooper

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As the hon. Lady will know, this challenge has been escalating for six years. We have seen a huge increase in the number of boat crossings, and underpinning that increase is the development of a criminal industry. In 2018 there were barely a handful of boat crossings, and now an entire criminal industry has developed based on false advertising and marketing, and on being able to promise people that they will be able to work illegally. That is why the previous Government’s complete failure to take enforcement action on illegal working or to make sure that there was a proper system in place for returns has been deeply damaging.

The Bill provides statutory underpinning for the new Border Security Command. For too long, different agencies with responsibility for border security have been operating in silos, without clear strategy or direction. Criminals can exploit that fragmentation, and the new Border Security Command that we established last summer is drawing together the work of different agencies including Border Force, the National Crime Agency, local police forces, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, immigration enforcement, the intelligence and security agencies and, because strengthening our borders means working internationally, the work of the Foreign Office on border security. Led by former police chief Martin Hewitt, Border Security Command is already having an impact, driving law enforcement co-operation across Europe and beyond. By placing it on a statutory footing and securing its authority and direction, for the first time border security is being treated as the national security issue that it needs to be, engaging with the multiple challenges and threats that we face around our borders.

The Bill strengthens the powers that law enforcement can use against ruthless and devious criminals. For too long, the ringleaders and facilitators of this wretched trade have been able to evade justice by ensuring that they are not present when the money changes hands or the boats set off. That has to change. Learning from early intervention counter-terrorism powers, the Bill will make possible much stronger early action against smuggler and trafficking gangs. New powers will better target supply chains, making it an offence to organise the buying, selling and transporting of small boat parts, motors and engines to be used for illegal entry—not waiting until we can prove that the boats in question were used to arrive at Western Jet Foil.

We are making it an offence to organise the logistics or gather information for the purposes of organised immigration crime, making clear that that is targeting criminal gangs who are profiting from trading in people, not those who help rescue others from serious danger or harm. We are giving law enforcement powers to seize and search the mobile phones of those arriving on small boats, to trace the gangs who organised their journey. As Rob Jones from the National Crime Agency said,

“if you get effective legislation, and you get concerted effort across the system internationally, you can make a real difference.”

That is why a Bill such as this is so important.

Yvette Cooper

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We have been clear as part of the plan for change that the purpose is to reduce illegal migration and the number of boats crossing the channel, because no one should be making those dangerous journeys. We must take these powers to be able to go after the gangs —powers that, astonishingly, the hon. Gentleman and his party seem to want to vote against tonight. They will be voting against the action that we need, and voting in favour of the criminal gangs, letting them off the hook once again.

I am also deeply concerned about the growing violence and risk to life. In the past 12 months we have seen a disturbing number of cases where the French authorities have tried to rescue people, including children, from dangerously overcrowded boats on which they were being crushed to death. One such case was last April when a seven-year-old girl died. Even though people had died and many were complicit in the crushing and putting lives at risk, some refused rescue and remained on the boat to travel to the UK. We must be able to take stronger action here in the UK. We must be able to extradite people to France to face trial, but we need powers in the UK too. A new offence of endangering life at sea is being introduced to send a clear message that we will take action against those who are complicit in loss of life or risk to life at sea. Those involved in behaviour that puts others at risk of serious injury or death, such as physical aggression, intimidation or rejecting rescue attempts, will face prosecution.

Yvette Cooper

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The purpose of this Bill is to pursue the criminal gangs who are undermining border security and putting lives at risk. That is the way the criminal gangs work, and that is why the Bill is so important. Unless we do that, any other measure we take in any direction will be undermined and will fail. The UK must always do its bit—it has always done its bit—alongside other countries to help those fleeing persecution. That is what we have done and continue to do for Afghanistan, for example. We also have to ensure that Governments, not gangs, choose who enters our country and that we prevent this criminal trade in people that is putting lives at risk.

The Bill will upgrade serious crime prevention orders, which are a potentially vital tool, but are currently underused. Under new interim serious crime prevention orders, the process will be streamlined, so that strict curbs can be placed on individuals suspected of involvement in organised immigration crime before they are prosecuted and convicted. That could mean, for example, restrictions placed on travel, social media access or the subject’s finances, so that early intervention can prevent dangerous action.

Yvette Cooper

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The right hon. Member will be aware that the common travel area has long been in place, and that means that arrangements have to be addressed differently. Part of the problem with the whole asylum and immigration system has been that issues around enforcement have just not been taken seriously enough for far too long. We have been clear that the rules need to be respected and enforced. That is why we have substantially increased the resources and staffing available for enforcement and returns. It is why we have had 19,000 people returned. It is why we have increased returns. For example, we have increased enforced returns by 24%. It is why we have also increased the illegal working raids by 38% just since the election. That is a substantial increase in the illegal working raids and arrests, because not enough action was being taken on illegal working and employers exploiting people. If we do not have that system of proper enforcement, people think it is just too easy to ignore the rules, to break the rules and to ignore the system, and that is what we have to turn around. There has to be some credibility underpinning the asylum and immigration system and some enforcement of the rules; frankly, there just has not been that for far too long.

We will introduce two new offences to criminalise the making, adapting, importing, supplying and offering to supply and the possession of a specified list of articles for use in serious crime. That includes templates for 3D-printed firearms, pill presses and vehicle concealment. We will introduce stronger powers to go after dangerous criminals—criminals who are planning to provide small boats, supplying small boats, putting lives at risk, undermining border security and organising serious crime.

Yvette Cooper

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The right hon. Member makes an important point, because we have to do this work in co-ordination with other countries. Alongside the UK’s setting up the Border Security Command, France is setting up its new organised immigration crime unit and a new intelligence centre and is strengthening enforcement. Alongside the UK’s strengthening our law to be able to go after the preparatory supply chains used by the people smugglers, Germany is also committed, as part of our new agreement, to strengthen its laws so that it can take action against the warehouses that we know hold huge numbers of the flimsy boats that are then used to transport people across the channel, putting lives at risk. He is absolutely right that this has to be done in co-operation and co-ordination with other countries, because the best way to strengthen border security is to work in co-operation.

The National Crime Agency is also clear that some of the organisers are here in the UK, such as those who do the facilitation, organise the supply chains and organise and help plan some of the routes, the dropping-off points and the advertising. Some of them are based in the UK, so we need the powers to be able to go after them here. If we are asking France, Germany and other countries to do their bit to help go after the criminal gangs, we need to make sure we are doing our bit, too.

That is why, to be honest, I find it absolutely astonishing that the Conservatives are planning to vote against Second Reading and against the provisions we are putting forward. [Interruption.] There is no point doing, “Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, but”; the impact of the reasoned amendment from the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) is to refuse to give a Second Reading to this Bill, which puts forward counter-terrorism-style powers to go after the criminal people smugglers and traffickers who have undermined border security and put lives at risk. We have seen reasoned amendments from Reform and the Scottish National party, too, all wanting to oppose this Bill and the powers we need to go after the criminal gangs. Frankly, they should all explain why they want to let down the people of this country and stand up instead for the people smugglers and the traffickers who are putting lives at risk and undermining our border security. On the Government Benches, we believe we should go after those gangs, because theirs is a vile and illegal trade.

The Bill also strengthens intelligence gathering and intelligence sharing to tackle organised immigration crime. It will make it easier for customs data to be shared with the Home Office and police and provides for data held by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency on UK-registered trailers to be shared with law enforcement in real time. The House will remember the terrible case where 39 people died in the back of a trailer in Essex. The Bill will help detect attempts to smuggle people or goods into the country illegally via lorry. It will also provide for biometric checks to be taken more easily in different locations, including from Scottish ports and evacuation routes.

Importantly, the Bill also restores order to the asylum system by putting an end to some of the failed gimmicks and unworkable mess that the previous Government left us. That includes sorting out the chaos created by the unworkable and contradictory provisions in the Illegal Migration Act 2023, most of which are so unworkable that Conservative Ministers never commenced or implemented them. Some 34 major clauses were passed by this House but never commenced, because Ministers knew they would not work. Sixteen more were commenced, but never operationalised, because they were simply unworkable. The chaotic combination of section 9 and section 2 meant that anyone who arrived could claim asylum, get asylum support and get put up in an asylum hotel, but the Home Office could never take a decision on their case, so they would have to stay forever—an asylum Hotel California which people never leave, while the backlog soars and the taxpayer foots the bill.

We are repealing many of those chaotic, gimmicky and broken laws, including the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, which will allow us to withdraw from the UK-Rwanda treaty that would otherwise have cost us hundreds of millions of pounds more for an unworkable scheme.

Yvette Cooper

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I would just point out to the hon. Member that his party’s previous Government opened 400 hotels. This Government have already cut the cost of asylum accommodation substantially, and we continue to do so. We have also had to start clearing the backlog that was created by the previous Government collapsing asylum decisions in the run-up to the election, creating total chaos.

The Bill is about restoring order to the immigration and asylum system and rebuilding our border security. Immigration has always been important to the UK, but that is why it should be controlled and managed so that the system is fair. Our country will always do our bit to help those who have fled persecution and conflict, but the system needs grip and control, not gimmicks and false promises. Unlike our predecessors, we will not claim that there is a single fantasy gimmick that will solve the serious challenges. The gangs have been allowed to take hold for six years, so it will take time to loosen that grip and smash the networks that lie behind them, but there is no alternative to the hard graft of going after those gang networks, which have been getting away with this for far too long. Nor is there an alternative to working with international partners on this international crime, building new alliances against organised criminals—not just standing on the shoreline shouting at the sea.

If all the other parties are serious about tackling the criminal gangs that undermine our border security and put lives at risk, if they are serious about tackling crime, if they are serious about tackling criminals, and if they are serious about protecting our borders, they will support the Bill. The gangs do not care about borders, or whether the people they exploit live or die, but we have a responsibility to the British people, who rightly expect our borders to be secure, to go after the criminal gangs that are undermining them. We have a moral duty to prevent further tragedies, and stop the gangs that undermine border security and put lives at risk. I commend the Bill to the House.

Yvette Cooper

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Perhaps the shadow Home Secretary can confirm that the measure in the Illegal Migration Act on citizenship was never commenced because it was unworkable. The Government have strengthened the powers to ensure that small boat arrivals cannot get citizenship by strengthening the rules. We have done more in seven months than the Conservative party did in 14 years. If he really wants to support counter-terrorism-style powers, why is he going to vote against the Bill on Second Reading?

The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)

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I just want to point out that, contrary to some of the reporting when the Bill was published, the vast majority of the clauses in the Illegal Migration Act that prevented children and others from having access to the national referral mechanism have, in fact, been repealed.

Dame Angela Eagle

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To reassure my hon. Friend, these items certainly will not include children’s toys, and nor will we be doing anything to introduce widespread powers that just apply to everybody. These are intelligence-led powers that will focus on those in the gangs doing the organising.

The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)

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There was one iota of reality and truth in the middle of that farrago of rubbish that we have just heard from the Conservative party, and I will quote it because I pricked up my ears. The hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) said that there are “no easy solutions” to this problem. You could have fooled me, Madam Deputy Speaker! Conservative Members spent most of their last few years in office telling us that there were easy solutions and passing legislation that was so unusable and useless that they never commenced it, yet they now complain about our taking it off the statue book.

Conservative Members need to explain to the people of this country why they do not want counter-terrorism-style powers to deal with organised immigration, and why they are voting against sensible extensions of powers, which have been asked for by the National Crime Agency, our Border Security Commander and the police, to help deal with this challenge on our borders. Why are they against the Bill? Almost all of them are still trying to claim that somehow their fantasy of the Rwanda scheme actually was a deterrent, when we know that it did not work—[Interruption.] The shadow Home Secretary can chunter all he likes, but 84,000 people crossed the channel in small boats when the Rwanda scheme was in operation and on the statute book. Conservative Members started off by saying that all they had to do was talk about the Rwanda scheme and it would be a deterrent. Then it was, “Once we’ve put it on the statue book it will be a deterrent”, and now all of a sudden it is, “Oh well, it never worked because not a plane took off.”

Dame Angela Eagle

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No. If they were so convinced that the Rwanda scheme was going to work, why did they hold a general election a week before the first plane was due to take off?

This crucial Bill will give law enforcement new powers to combat threats to border security and evolve our response as those threats change. Before I respond, in a slightly quieter way I hope, to some of the many excellent speeches we have heard today, I remind the House of the dire legacy left to us by the Conservatives. They left a system in chaos, where asylum claims were hardly being processed. It takes some brass neck for the shadow Home Secretary to complain that the number has gone up. It has gone up because we started to process decisions, which they had stopped. [Interruption.] Yes, it has gone up because we are processing decisions. We have a system where they did not do any processing for a year, then they wonder why there are a load of people in a backlog. We had to come into government and clean up the mess. Asylum claims were hardly being processed, and we are now processing 11,000 a month. The Conservatives were down to below 2,000 a month.

Tens of thousands of people were left in limbo. Tens of thousands more were crossing the channel in small boats because they were not deterred by the Rwanda scheme. Some 84,000 people crossed while the Rwanda scheme was being pursued. The Conservatives pursued expensive and unworkable gimmicks, spending £700 million to send four volunteers to Rwanda. They allowed ruthless gangsters to operate with impunity and make a fortune exploiting desperate people. They put legislation on the statute book that was so unworkable, even they did not commence it, and now they are complaining about our having to repeal it. I like a tidy statute book; we are not going to leave the rubbish that the Conservatives put on the statute book to clutter it up.

It is time to shift the dial. That is why this Bill puts the Border Security Command on a legal footing, offering system leadership and co-ordination across borders. The Bill introduces counter-terror-style powers to disrupt and prevent organised immigration crime and the gangs from profiting from the exploitation and misery that they cause. It takes the fight to the gangs on multiple fronts, using every possible tool at our disposal.

Dame Angela Eagle

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The Border Security Command co-ordinates and leads across Government; the right hon. Gentleman will want to serve on the Committee so that we can discuss this in detail. [Interruption.] I can tell the right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] I can tell him that the Border Security Commander is already leading across Government and making a real difference in operational co-ordination, which this Bill will put on the statute book. [Interruption.]

Dame Angela Eagle

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We are not doing line-by-line; those on the Opposition Front Bench need to know that that happens in Committee. I have just invited the right hon. Gentleman to sit on the Committee. If he looks, he will see that the first part of the Bill deals entirely with the Border Security Commander and putting his powers on the statute book, and it makes clear that he is a systems leader who can co-ordinate properly across Government. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I am too busy cleaning up the right hon. Gentleman’s mess to consider my position.

While we have been drafting the Bill, we have been busy in other places. As we know, there are no quick and easy answers to this complex problem; we finally heard that from the shadow Minister. We have therefore struck groundbreaking new agreements with key international partners, ranging from the Calais group to Italy and Germany. The Home Secretary has been to Iraq to do some important work on dealing with the gangs. [Hon. Members: “Private jets!”] Well, at least she has not taken a private jet to Rwanda. We all know that only four volunteers ever went there at huge cost, but two Home Secretaries went too. Certainly more Conservative Home Secretaries managed to go to Rwanda than asylum seekers ever did.

We are dealing with international co-operation because it is right both for returns and for co-ordination to smash international smuggling gangs and organised immigration crime that we work co-operatively with our colleagues, not only in Europe but further afield. We have also concentrated on actually enforcing the law, and illegal working visits and arrests are up 38% since we came into government. We have ramped up returns. The latest figures show that 18,987 people with no right to be here have been deported since we came into government. There is no point in having an asylum system if we do not return those people who are found to have no right to be here.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)

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There will be more than four.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Yes, it is certainly true that we promise to get more than four volunteers out of the country.

The Bill is not about posturing or pretending that there are easy answers to complex questions. The Bill is not about expensive gimmicks and an abject failure to deliver. The Bill is about restoring order to the chaos that we inherited from the Conservative party. It is about giving our law enforcement authorities the counter-terror-style powers that they need to dismantle the organised criminal gangs who are exploiting desperate people. It is about enforcing the law and securing our borders, and I commend it to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)

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Q I will try to speak louder so that everybody can hear. I must say, I am having trouble hearing some things because of the acoustics in this room, and it is quite full. Perhaps if our witnesses could speak a bit louder as well, that might help everybody.

Enver, thank you for your evidence. You welcomed the repeal of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 and the majority of the Illegal Migration Act, which this Bill accomplishes. Could you talk about your experience of trying to live with those Acts on the statute book? Some argue that those bits of legislation were the only deterrent that we could have had. Can I have your thoughts on whether they worked?

Enver Solomon: Absolutely. In short, they were a disaster. They were a disaster in terms of the lived experience of people who had come from places such as Sudan; we know about the civil war there. They created huge uncertainty and anxiety. Through our work, we saw a rise in levels of great mental distress, and even in suicide ideation, as a consequence of those pieces of legislation, which led to what we described as a system meltdown. That was a fundamental meltdown that resulted in the system pretty much coming to a standstill. The system slowed down, with productivity in asylum decision making at its lowest level since the height of the covid pandemic. It is absolutely right that steps were taken to address that and to ensure that the asylum system is functioning effectively.

The asylum system has to deliver integrity. It has to ensure that the public have trust in a system that functions. It functions by ensuring that decisions are fair—the great British value of fair play—by ensuring that decisions are taken in a timely fashion and by ensuring that taxpayers’ money is well spent. That means you do not have billions being wasted every year on housing people in hotels that become flashpoints for community tensions. The system also works effectively when it ensures that people are supported to integrate and to go on and contribute to communities across the country in the way that generations of refugees have done. Critically, you must also ensure that if people are not granted protection, there are appropriate pathways to support them to return to the countries they have come from.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q There are those—I would like the other witnesses to comment if they wish—who say that the only way of getting any coherence back into our system is to leave the European convention on human rights and disaggregate ourselves from all the human rights legislation. Do you think that that is an appropriate way forward?

Enver Solomon: I will let my colleagues come in.

Daniel O’Malley: In relation to the European convention on human rights, frankly, coming out will not help anyone—it will not make the system any more efficient. For example, when it comes to the human trafficking provisions in the Illegal Migration Act, we want to see more of those repealed because they undermine human trafficking protections in Scotland.

The broader repeal that has happened of the Illegal Migration Act and the statutory instrument laid down to alter that Act has aided, for example, the guardianship programme in Scotland, which gives a guardian to unaccompanied minors in Scotland and was put on to a statutory footing in Scotland under the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015. It helps that programme because asylum claims were previously just not being made under the IMA, so that programme had thousands more people in it. The programme was operating, but it was getting overloaded with more and more people.

The wider point is that there are protections that we are signed up to—for example, the UN convention for refugees. Continuing with those is absolutely right; the repeal of them will not make the system any more efficient and it will not be a deterrent to anyone.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Mubeen, do you have a comment?

Mubeen Bhutta: I do not have anything more to add to the important points that Daniel made.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Dr Walsh, you have just argued that deterrence does not really work, yet one of the big arguments on Second Reading was that somehow by repealing the Safety of Rwanda Act and most of the Illegal Migration Act we had thrown away the only thing that would work. Would you care to comment on that?

Dr Peter Walsh: Because under the IMA the Government proposed not to process people’s claims, they would not have known whether returning those individuals to countries of origin would be safe or not. That is where Rwanda came in.

There were always questions about the deterrent effect of the Rwanda policy. For my part, whatever deterrent effect it would have had would have depended fundamentally on how many people were actually sent to Rwanda. You can imagine that if it was a large share of people arriving by small boat, that might make people think twice, but if it were a small share—only thousands a year when we have tens of thousands of small boat arrivals—that would imply that the chance of being sent to Rwanda was fairly small. You can imagine that the people then making the trip would view that risk as just one risk among many much greater risks—risking their lives, for example—so there were always real questions about the deterrent effect of the Rwanda policy and how many people would in fact have been sent there.

The last Government said that the scheme was uncapped, and the Rwandan Government said, “We can take as many people as you can send.” But there were logistical challenges there, not least among them where people would be detained. At that time we had about 1,800 people in immigration detention in the UK, with a capacity of 2,200. You would have to detain people if you were threatening to remove them to Rwanda, so that was a very big initial stumbling block, putting aside whatever the capacity of those Rwandan facilities would have been, and more broadly the capacity of the Rwandan asylum system to process large numbers of claims. Typically it processed only a few hundred a year, not 10,000 or 20,000, so there were real questions there.

The big risk was what to do with people who are neither deterred from arriving nor able to be removed to Rwanda. That would be a sub-population in the UK without legal status who would be here indefinitely, so they would for ever have no legal right to remain in the UK, but we would be required to provide them with asylum accommodation and support at great cost. That was the risk when it came to Rwanda and the IMA.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q You said something really interesting in your first comment: that you felt some of the people arriving on small boats are doing so because we are out of the Dublin system—in other words, because of Brexit. Were you surprised, perhaps, that in the withdrawal agreement there was no provision to try to opt into Dublin III and a half or whatever it might have been called?

Dr Peter Walsh: I was not surprised, because I think that was consistent with the attitude at the time on the part of the Government. I did note that they did decide not to pursue a similar kind of agreement, which hampered them in a certain sense because there was no longer a mechanism to return asylum seekers arriving by small boat to the EU. It is true that in the last five years or so that we were a part of Dublin, we were actually a net receiver of asylum seekers under the system: we received more than we sent out. That is for various reasons, including administrative ones. But yes, it was striking that a similar kind of agreement or remaining a part of the Dublin system was not pursued because that appeared to hamper the Government in that aim—namely, to remove people arriving without authorisation to the EU.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Zoe, what is your view on the idea that has gained traction in certain areas of this debate—that the Human Rights Act and the ECHR are effectively preventing us from having a reasonable system, and that the only way to have an asylum system that works is to pull out of those international agreements?

Zoe Bantleman: As the witnesses in the previous session have already said, those are not the only international legal agreements by which we are bound. The UK has voluntarily agreed to be bound by a great many international legal agreements, including in relation to the rights of children, the convention on action against trafficking and the conventions on the rights of stateless persons. There are a whole host in addition to the refugee convention and the European convention on human rights.

One of the hallmarks of the new Government has been this new-found commitment towards our international legal obligations, and also restoring the UK’s position as a leader in the international rules-based order, which all three of the previous Acts—the Safety of Rwanda Act, the Illegal Migration Act and the Nationality and Borders Act before it—eroded. I think it is fundamental to retain our commitment towards our international legal obligations. But there was also a case in the High Court in Belfast, brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission in relation to the Illegal Migration Act, that found that it was not only the convention on human rights that was breached by the Illegal Migration Act, but also the Windsor framework itself.

At a time when His Majesty’s Government are trying to reset the relationship with Europe, it seems a very strange thing to do—to try to back out of our human rights obligations. Again, the Good Friday agreement and the trade and co-operation agreement with the European Union are both based on our compliance with the European convention on human rights.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q What is your general opinion of the changes that would be introduced to the current immigration law structures with the repeal of the Safety of Rwanda Act and the vast majority of the Illegal Migration Act? What is your opinion on strengthening the powers of the Border Security Command, which are a central part of the Bill?

Dame Rachel de Souza: I do not want to see any child crossing the channel in a small boat. I have sat in those small boats myself. I have talked to children who have come across on them. I have seen eight-year-olds, blind children and children with Down’s syndrome come across on them. The crossings are dangerous. One case that sticks in my mind is that of a young Iranian lad who saw his parents killed in front of him. He was taken by smugglers and did not know where he was going, but he came across on a small boat. Anything to stop these wicked traffickers is good in my book, as long as we are protecting and safeguarding children.

You will know that I was very vocal about the Illegal Migration Act, particularly the bits that conflicted with the Children Act 1989. When a child is on this soil, up to the age of 18, the Children Act has authority over them. I was very worried about the Home Office accommodating children, and I am pleased to see that has now been changed. Every Home Office official was working hard to do their best by those children, but the Home Office accommodation and the hotel accommodation were not suitable. Children were languishing without proper safeguarding in inappropriate places. Children’s social care must look after unaccompanied children, so I am pleased to see that change.

From a children’s perspective, I am pleased to see the Rwanda Act repealed. Children told me that it would not have stopped them coming; they were just going to disappear at 18. It would have ended up putting them at more risk. I had concerns about that. I also had concerns about children who had been settled here for a number of years then, at 18, being liable to be moved to Rwanda, so I am pleased to see that changed.

In general, I am really supportive of this Bill. There are some things that I would like to see it go further on, and I do have some concerns, but in general I am very supportive.

The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)

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Q Starting with Rob Jones, what do the witnesses think the Bill does for them operationally?

Rob Jones: It gives us the opportunity to make the most of the intelligence dividend that we have invested in tackling the threat. We have a good understanding of the people behind small boats crossings in particular, the supply of materials, the facilitation from near-Europe and further afield, but we want momentum and greater agility so that when we are aware that a crossing is being prepared—when materials are moving—we can act pre-emptively and proactively.

As I said earlier, we do not want to be investigating after thousands of people have arrived, and trying to put together very complex investigations that may involve months of covert surveillance and eavesdropping—a whole range of covert tactics—to get us over the line for a charging decision for a section 25 offence. The new offences give us the opportunity to act when we see that jigsaw puzzle coming together, to go to the CPS when we reach a tipping point and to go earlier than we can now. That means that we can pull more people through that system, deliver justice more quickly and be more disruptive in tackling the threat. That is a big step forward. That is lacking in the current toolbox to operationalise the intelligence we have.

Sarah Dineley: The endangerment offence potentially fills a gap between the current section 24 and 25 provisions. Each boat has a pilot—someone steering it across the channel—who, by the very nature and condition of those boats, the overcrowding, the lack of lifesaving equipment, and so on, puts everyone in that boat in danger of losing their life. We welcome that clause and will draft guidance on how it can be interpreted in terms of practical application.

Jim Pearce: Police officers mainly deal with the inland clandestine events as opposed to the small boats. From my point of view, it would be, correctly, common practice to use schedule 2(17) of the Immigration Act 1971 to detain migrants and then pass them into the immigration system. On searches after that, yes, there are powers in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 after that provision under section 32, but that is mainly to safeguard; it is not to seize evidence.

On Rob’s point about early intervention and intelligence gathering, the only way you gather intelligence is through what people tell you and what electronic devices give up. The Bill gives police officers the ability to gather intelligence through defined and clear powers in legislation, so that they are not misusing a PACE power, an operational procedure or anything else. That would be the biggest change for policing.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q We often hear that organised immigration crime is very lucrative, well established and transnational, and that there is therefore no point in doing a lot about it. What is your answer to that?

Rob Jones: You could say that about all serious organised crime. Where do you go from there? I do not agree with that view. It is definitely transnational and complicated, but it is a relatively new serious organised crime threat, and it is not too late to stop it. In 2018, there were a few hundred people coming on small boats. There were 36,000 last year. We need to unravel the conditions that have allowed that to happen, and this legislation will help with that. I do not take the view that you cannot stop it.

There will always be people attempting organised immigration crime, but this element of it—small boats—is relatively new. There are very specific things that organised crime groups involved in it need to do. They need access to very specific materials—otherwise they cannot move the numbers that they attempt to move—and they need to be able to operate using materials that are lawfully obtained, albeit for criminal purposes. This attacks that business model because we can pursue the dual-use materials with more vigour and have more impact. It is challenging, and it is a different challenge from drugs and other threats, but it is there to be dealt with. It is a very public manifestation of the OIC threat that has always been there. This part of it relies on a very specific business model that we can attack.

Sarah Dineley: The follow-on point from that, and one that you raised, is that people are making a lot of money out of this, so the illicit finance piece is really important. These new clauses actually give us more on which to hang illicit finance investigations. There is a lot of work going on in the illicit finance sphere; in particular, and most recent, the illicit finance taskforce between the UK and Italy, was set up specifically to look at the profits being made by the people who are preying on other people’s misery.

Jim Pearce: It has been said already but I want to reinforce the point about organised crime gangs being involved in polycriminality. Organised immigration crime is one part, but so are modern slavery, serious acquisitive crime and drug running. That is felt in local communities across the whole country. In my own force area of Devon and Cornwall, you would think that modern slavery and organised immigration crime do not exist, but we have a number of investigations and intelligence leads being developed; they are being looked at by both our regional crime units and members of Rob’s team. This exists everywhere across the country. As I say, if you are prepared to effectively smuggle people into the country, or at least to facilitate that, you are prepared to get involved in very serious things indeed.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Migration Watch’s website says that you are worried about population projections and a

“significant fall in the percentage of the indigenous (white British) population.”

Can you explain what your worry is, and could you define “indigenous white population”?

Alp Mehmet: First, I am a first-generation migrant. I came here as an eight-year-old. I have been here since the mid-’50s. The immigrant ethnic minority element of the population in those days was something like 4%. In the 1951 census, it was 3.9%, and it is now 25%. That has substantially happened over the last 30 years.

What worries me, if that is the right word, is the fact that people are being added to the population, and migration is the only driver of population increase at the moment. I know you have David Coleman coming up next. He will tell you a great deal more about the likely evolution of the population’s demographic mix. That is my concern. Having arrived here as a migrant, and accepted and joined this country and made it my own, I see it now changing very rapidly into something that the majority of people in this country do not want to happen.

Dame Angela Eagle

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You still have not told us what indigenous means, but thank you very much.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Professor Coleman, are you a member of the Galton Institute?

David Coleman: Yes and no. The Galton Institute does not exist any more; it has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum.

Dame Angela Eagle

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But it is a eugenics organisation?

David Coleman: No, it is not. It is devoted to genetics research and has conferences every year on genetics research. It promotes research into that and has a small grant fund that people can apply for. It is a very pukka organisation.

If you have any doubts about it, I suggest that you look at its publications and its website. You will find something by me on that that is only slightly connected to genetics: “New Light on Old Britons”—it is about palaeontology and human evolution. That is one of the things that the organisation was interested in. You are quite right that it started off as the Eugenics Society, and before that it was the Eugenics Education Society. That was in the days when progressives of every kind clustered around to support eugenic ideas because they were thought to be improving and beneficial to society. Society has changed its mind—

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Eugenics was discredited because of the rise of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, was it not?

David Coleman: It got a terribly bad name for that reason—exactly so. That is why, over the last century, opinion has moved against using that word and using those notions. But I respectfully point out that it has nothing to do with asylum seeking.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Do you believe in universal human rights—that all human beings are equal and deserving of universal human rights?

David Coleman: I suppose, as a rather bad Christian, I am bound to believe that, but the problem with human rights definitions is that they tend to be infinitely extendible. All kinds of entitlements that started off being universally accepted by almost everyone of good will tend to get expanded beyond reason.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q You mentioned that trying to deal with the problems of illegal or irregular immigration can mean being, in some ways, “nasty to the smugglers”, which the Bill is, but also nasty to asylum seekers. Do you want to talk about what you mean by that?

David Coleman: I mean making the prospect of life in the country of intended asylum less attractive than otherwise might be the case. That is what the Rwanda policy was. I suppose I was speaking slightly tongue in cheek in calling it “nasty”, but it certainly is not the same thing as being welcoming, is it? The idea of the Rwanda Bill was to secure the safety from persecution and risk of death for asylum seekers, which is the aim of asylum, without admitting them to Britain and all the benefits of being in a rich country.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q But the reality was that tens of thousands of people had arrived and could not be processed, because of the Illegal Migration Act and its flaws. They were just living in hotels forever, as they were not able to be processed and not able to be sent anywhere else. How is that a solution to the issues that we are trying to deal with?

David Coleman: I am not here to defend the Rwanda policy, although I think that, in principle, it had some merit. That is a problem that would arise whether there was a Rwanda policy or an Illegal Migration Act or not, because of the sheer pressure of asylum seeking from all corners of the world. That has been the case in the past for a long time and will continue to be the case. We now have asylum claims up to 99,000 in the last year, so it is not just to do with the Illegal Migration Act; it is a worldwide process.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Of course, asylum claims are up because they were not being processed, but now they are. That is dealing with the backlog that was caused by the problems with the Illegal Migration Act.

David Coleman: I do not know how important the Illegal Migration Act was in increasing the number of the backlog, to be perfectly honest. In the past, it has been the same height without the Illegal Migration Act. About 15 or 20 years ago, it was also 90,000 per year, and that was way before any of the past legislation was enacted.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Professor Bell, do you think that in a democracy it ought to be the elected Members and the Government who decide who can come to our country, rather than criminals and people smugglers?

Professor Brian Bell: Yes.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Therefore, do you share my view that, when we see the establishment along our borders of serious organised immigration criminals who are profiting greatly from their illicit activities and putting people’s lives at risk, we should try to do all we can to put a stop to it?

Professor Brian Bell: Absolutely, but that is sort of true of all crimes: if someone is committing a crime, you want to stop them doing it. I think the difficulty is in the question: if you stop one criminal doing it, what happens? Is there a substitution effect where you just get the next organised crime organisation taking action? The risk is that you may well succeed, but the overall macro effect of that may be not as positive as you might hope.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q But of course that is not a reason for not doing it, is it?

Professor Brian Bell: Absolutely not.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Could you therefore comment on whether the new powers in the Bill will have an effect on our ability as a society with law and order to crack down on some of that abuse?

Professor Brian Bell: It is likely to have some positive effect. In some sense, it cannot have a negative effect, so it must have some positive effect. The difficulty is that, as almost everyone would accept, it is impossible to judge ex ante what the size of that effect will be, but that sort of tells you that you should try it and see how it works.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q We are taking evidence to see whether people think these things will be effective. I am not asking you to produce a crystal ball and tell us in advance, but I am trying to get a handle on whether you think this is an effort worth making. It seems to me that you are saying that it is.

Professor Brian Bell: It is an effort worth making, but I would caution that in other areas of police and crime activity, the impact of being tougher with sanctions and new offences does not necessarily lead to very substantial changes in crime rates. The overall crime rate in the UK is almost certainly driven more by incentives and economic outcomes in the long run than it is by particular offences and statutes that are passed.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Q Is it desirable to use counter-terrorism-style powers to disrupt so that we can prevent some of these crossings from happening rather than waiting until after people have died in the channel and then trying to pick up the pieces?

Professor Brian Bell: Completely.

The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)

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It is a pleasure to serve with you chairing our proceedings, Dr Murrison, and I look forward to many hours of that—as I am sure you do.

I will set out what clauses 1 and 2 do and hopefully persuade the Committee that amendment 10 is not required. The clauses set out the role of the Border Security Commander and detail the terms and conditions under which they hold the office. The purpose of the Opposition’s amendment 10 is to remove the requirement that the Border Security Commander be a civil servant. The hon. Member for Stockton West—I will learn all Members’ constituencies by the time we get to the end—seemed to say that he thought there was operational benefit in complete independence. I suppose that is one way of looking at it, but there is also benefit in co-ordination and in being attached to a central strategic point. The Government believe that that attachment, rather than total independence for the sake of it, is more likely to be effective.

Amendment 10 implies that the Border Security Commander should not be a civil servant. The role of the commander is a civil service role and the Border Security Command is a directorate within the Home Office. In a future recruitment exercise, existing civil servants could be appointed or the role could be advertised externally. Under the arrangements in clause 1 there is no limit one way or the other on where the Border Security Commander might come from—they could be internal or external. I hope that is some reassurance.

The mechanism of appointment is a civil service recruitment campaign to ensure that the best candidate is selected on merit. Given that the role sits within the Home Office and leads the functions of a directorate in the Department, it is logical that the role would be a civil service role. The idea is to cohere, not to fragment the work that is done. I see it very much as ensuring that all the cogs across Government connect with one another, so that when we turn the wheel we get something out at the end, rather than having a load of cogs that do not connect, which would not lead to a more effective outcome.

Clause 1 sets out that the Secretary of State must designate a civil servant as the commander and will make the necessary arrangements to ensure that resources are available to support them in exercising their functions. The Bill will place the Border Security Commander on a statutory footing, which will future-proof and solidify the role and ensure a clear direction and leadership for the UK’s border security system. Placing the Border Security Commander under this new legal framework is a clear signal of our determination to tackle organised immigration crime by going after the criminals who put lives at risk and undermine our border security.

Clause 2 details the commander’s terms and conditions and how they will hold, maintain and vacate the office. This clarity is necessary to ensure continuity in the role, and it underlines the Government’s commitment to making the Border Security Commander an enduring office.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I made it clear in my response to the hon. Member for Stockton West that the recruitment could be done externally. Were somebody to be appointed who was not a civil servant when they applied, they would then come into the Home Office on civil service terms, bringing with them whatever experience they had and that the recruitment process had determined would be suitable for the role. I am not sure there is much between us, unless the hon. Lady is implying that, by the act of becoming a civil servant, the commander would somehow be less effective. I do not believe that is the case, especially as the idea is to ensure that the Border Security Commander can convene the entire system across Government Departments. Having a base in the Home Office, albeit designated as a civil servant, will make that more effective rather than less effective. To be clear, if the legislation gets on the statute book, any future office holder would not have to come from the civil service. I hope that reassures the hon. Lady.

Dame Angela Eagle

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The hon. Lady implies that total independence from the machinery of government would somehow assist in the job that we wish the Border Security Commander to do. I do not agree with her in that analysis. The job of the Border Security Commander is to convene and cohere and to strategically focus, across Government Departments, with a focus on checking that our border security is as effective as it can be. I do not think that total independence is going to add to effectiveness in that context. In fact, we believe that having the commander operating out of the Home Office at a director general level, but appointed by the Prime Minister with a special place in primary legislation, is a more effective way to ensure that the commander’s basic role has the biggest-percentage likelihood of being effective.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I thank my hon. Friend the Member for—is it Dover?

Dame Angela Eagle

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I was just checking that I had my hon. Friend’s entire constituency name. They have all changed, Dr Murrison, which can be a bit disorientating because I am used to the old names.

My hon. Friend is exactly right. He demonstrates, through the evidence we heard—particularly from the NCA, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police chiefs last Thursday—that there is and was a strategic gap. Everybody is doing fantastic work in the NCA, the police, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the security services, but nobody had taken a focused look at how border security could be delivered most effectively. From the meetings I have had since Martin Hewitt took up his post, it seems there is almost relief that somebody is convening a board that can look at analytics on where the threats are, how they are developing and how we can best deal with them, and do the legwork to come up with a strategy focused on border security. That is the whole point of creating the command.

Dame Angela Eagle

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My hon. Friend makes some very good points, particularly about over-correction between Governments but also about the fact that independence is an obvious thing to have for particular posts—in inspection, for example, but not necessarily operational ones—and the need to cohere a system, to ensure that all the good work being done across different Departments can be focused strategically on one aim. That is what the clauses seek to do.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I do not want to read out the job description, which was put out there ahead of Martin Hewitt being appointed last year. It is there for all to see, it is a public document. The role is very much about being able to operationally cohere the system and to make certain by the operation of the Border Security Commander’s board, upon which sit many of the other parts of Government that need to have regard to the strategy, that we decide how to take forward and deal with threats to our border security. It is not really rocket science, and I do not think that there would be much to be gained from putting the details of all of that into primary legislation.

It is important that as the threats to our border security evolve, which they certainly will do over time, that we do not find ourselves with a very rigid set of requirements in primary legislation, which is hard to change. The idea is to have convening powers to give flexibility to the commander to ensure that he can bring together all of the forces across Government that are charged with security in this area and ensure that the focus on organised immigration, crime and border security is always at the forefront of the work that they do.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Could the hon. Lady go into more detail about what she means with respect to that? I have given her an assurance that the Border Security Commander could come from outside of the civil service and be appointed from outside of the civil service, but would then take up a civil service role of convening within Government and with the support of Government. That means that we do not have to set up an entirely new independent structure and fund it separately, which would be more likely to disintegrate rather than integrate the strategic approach to this multifaceted problem. I am beginning to wonder what the hon Lady has got against civil servants?

Dame Angela Eagle

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It is true that independence has a very valuable part to play, particularly in holding Government structures to account. For example, the independent inspectors of our detention or prison estates who are allowed to go in and publish without fear or favour regarding what they find there. That is obviously a very important role where independence matters. But in this context, the Border Security Commander is cohering the effect and the work across Government that is trying to keep our borders properly protected. That is operational. It ties into the diplomatic and political as well, although obviously Ministers have an important part to play in that too.

The hon. Lady has nothing to worry about when it comes to the Border Security Commander sitting in a civil service context given that nothing in this Bill means that anyone who was not a civil servant when they applied to the post of Border Security Commander would be excluded from consideration. Being in the civil service to begin with is not a requirement.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I hold the hon. Gentleman in similar affection. We are pretty long in the tooth—we are the two people who are the most long in the tooth on this Bill Committee—and I look forward to listening to his arguments.

Dame Angela Eagle

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We are all going to be doing that.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I think Chief Miekelson will be on all our lists now. I spend the small amount of time I have in life to twiddle my thumbs looking for new detective dramas, and it seems I have overlooked one. I have been too into Scandi noir, when I should have been into Scottish noir. I will talk to the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire after the sitting to see whether he can give me a little more detail, so that I can follow up for my own enjoyment.

This group contains various provisions relating to the Border Security Commander, including amendments 11 to 13 and new clause 21 from the official Opposition, and new clause 7, which the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire spoke to. It also contains amendment 1, with which the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire opened our proceedings on this group. In our earlier exchange, he and I reflected on how long in the tooth we both are. So experienced is he that he anticipated what my answer to his amendment would be, and his comments show that he has a coherent and experienced view of the way in which human rights law works. If we had to list in every single bit of primary legislation the treaties we had solemnly entered into, and the international agreements that we had, in many cases, helped to formulate and that we had then put into effect in our own law, we would have an even messier statute book than we have at the moment.

Amendment 1 seeks to ensure that the commander has full regard to the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings while carrying out all his functions. Both pieces of international agreement and law were freely entered into by predecessor Governments, and we take them extremely seriously as a law-abiding Government who believe in the rule of law. The Border Security Commander will be a public authority within the meaning of section 6 of the Human Rights Act, and must act compatibly with the Act. That is absolutely the case. It is not explicitly written into the Bill, as the hon. Gentleman’s amendment would require, but that does not mean that all the requirements in the two agreements that amendment 1 mentions will not be adhered to.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Not in the room though.

Dame Angela Eagle

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The hon. Gentleman can be assured that everything the commander does must be compatible with our obligations under the Human Rights Act and the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings. Those things are implicit with every public office holder in the UK, in all the contexts in which they work. The fact that those things are implicit, and not explicitly in the Bill, does not undermine the commitment of any Government who want to act within the rule of law. One of the first things our current Prime Minister said when he walked through the door at Downing Street was that we would be a Government who respected the rule of law and the Human Rights Act.

Dame Angela Eagle

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My hon. Friend is exactly right. Under section 6 of the Human Rights Act, all office holders implicitly have to follow the rules of the European convention on human rights. One issue, if we decide to move away from the current approach and start to include an explicit provision in particular Bills—as the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire would—is that it might look like the implicit duty to adhere to these agreements does not apply if it is not stated explicitly. That would actually lead to a lessening of protections, if judges looking at what Parliament was legislating for decided that we must take account of section 6 of the Human Rights Act only if we put that in a Bill. We would end up in a worse situation.

I ask the hon. Member to accept that the structure in the Bill is the one we have used so far. I understand why he is sceptical, after the behaviour of the last Government, but I hope he accepts, given the Prime Minister’s pronouncements right from the beginning of this Government taking office, that we are not planning on undermining the Human Rights Act or its provisions.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I am not massively familiar with the Scottish statute book.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I feel I ought to intervene and separate the combatants. I reassure the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire—especially given the pronouncements from some in the previous Government—that this Government are absolutely committed to the provisions of the Human Rights Act and the convention on action against trafficking in human beings. I hope he accepts that and will withdraw his amendment.

Amendment 12 seeks to ensure that the strategic priority document produced by the Border Security Commander is supportive of the Home Office’s UK border strategy. Border security is a fundamental part of the strategic approach to the wider border, and the strategic priorities for border security will help to drive the wider UK approach. They are part of the approach—they are not a threat or a counter to it. The strategic priority document will be consulted on at the board—which the Committee will discuss when we reach clause 6—which has representatives from across the border security system, to ensure alignment with wider strategic approaches to the border. The whole point of the Bill is to cohere and convene and to ensure that there is co-operation across complex systems; it is not to disintegrate systems. Therefore, it would be fairly astonishing if the border security strategy was somehow completely at odds with what the Border Security Commander and the wider system were planning.

Amendment 13 seeks to give the Border Security Commander the power to direct the specified law enforcement bodies and personnel in the delivery of his objectives and strategic priorities. The power to direct—what the hon. Member for Stockton West called “empowerment”—is not required. During last week’s oral evidence, we heard from representatives of the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council that they welcome and value the collaboration to date with the Border Security Commander. The arrangements as provided for in the Bill will reflect and respect the operational requirements of the various board members. They are a balancing act between convening, collaborating and co-operating, and a way of ensuring that those who have some independence written into what they have to do in other areas feel not that they are being made “subject to” but that they are “collaborating with”. The most effective commanding is exactly that: it is done with co-operation; it is not done with dictatorial powers or attempts to undermine the independence of other organisations.

Under clause 5, partner authorities already have a duty to co-operate with the commander, in so far as it is reasonably practicable for them to do so. Under clause 3, partner authorities must have regard to the strategic priorities on which the board will be consulted and which will be endorsed by the Secretary of State, as set out in clause 4(b). Amendment 11 would remove the requirement for the Border Security Commander to obtain the consent of the Secretary of State to issue a strategic priority document.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh has already pointed out that an obsession with complete independence can actually fragment a system and make it harder for us to achieve outcomes by working together. He rightly mentioned that, where there is operational independence and we are trying to make a system work in co-operation, that can sometimes lead to cultures of secrecy and non-co-operation, rather than co-operation that focuses on objectives.

In the Bill, we wish to foster co-operation that focuses on very defined objectives and strategies. The Government believe that that is the best balance. Allowing the Border Security Commander to publish documents behind the back of the Home Secretary, for whatever reason he or she may think fit, is not exactly fostering a co-operative working environment or an environment that is likely to be successful. We believe that the way in which these things are expressed in the existing clauses is more likely to foster agreement.

As already discussed, the strategic priority document provided for in clause 3(2) will set out the principal threats to border security when the document is issued, as well as the strategic priorities to which partner authorities should have regard in exercising their functions in relation to any of the identified threats. The role of the Border Security Commander is to support the Government of the day, and it is therefore only right that Ministers and the Secretary of State endorse the strategic direction and collective response of this public authority in relation to border security.

The hon. Member for Stockton West seemed to want to give the Border Security Commander powers to do things and to remove the requirement for ministerial consent for whatever they wanted to do. That seems to set up the Border Security Commander in a more powerful position than Ministers, which seems an odd thing for a Member of Parliament and a shadow Minister to wish to do. We think that the right way of ensuring accountability for the way these things are done is to have ministerial involvement, rather than set up operational structures that are so independent of Ministers that people want to do things behind Ministers’ backs.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I can certainly assure the hon. Lady that I recognise the import of what she is trying to do with the new clause. Often, such proposals are hooks to hang a debate on, so that there can be a little more information about the Government’s intent. I can assure her that having close operational and diplomatic liaison across all the different structures we have to work with to deal with cross-border immigration crime is absolutely at the centre of what the Border Security Commander will want to do. When we come to it, I hope she will not press her new clause to a vote.

Dame Angela Eagle

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It is quite revealing that the hon. Gentleman seems to think that the natural order of things is for Ministers to be at loggerheads with civil servants and the people who are operationally charged with delivering on objectives. That may say more about Opposition Members than about the way we are seeking to achieve operational effectiveness and objectives in what we are doing.

Finally, new clause 21 focuses on the Border Security Commander’s functions in relation to tackling small boat crossings to the UK. This is an all-encompassing new clause, which goes far beyond the commander’s functions as set out in the Bill. The new clause seems to want the commander to be all things to all people.

The immediate priority is organised immigration crime-enabled small boat crossings. The Border Security Commander will, and necessarily must, evolve over time to provide the systems leadership across all threats as they emerge. Such crossings did not really emerge until 2018, but they have become embedded and more of a threat over time. Had we been discussing something like this in 2017, small boat crossings would not have featured at all. It is therefore important that our legislation allows the Border Security Commander to change approach or focus as new threats emerge. Threats evolve and change over time. Our approach accounts for that by stipulating in legislation that the Border Security Commander has particular objectives that might be important now but less important in the future. The new clause seems to me to present an overly difficult and inflexible way of moving forward.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Yes.

I was going to talk about what new clause 21 suggests we should do. For example, the subsection on asylum processing seems to say that the Border Security Commander should somehow take over the duty to ensure that those who arrive illegally are processed within six months—something that the Conservatives did not achieve at all during their time in Government. I am not certain why the Border Security Commander should be empowered to take over the entirety of the asylum system.

Next, the new clause states that the commander should also be in charge of immigration enforcement, and that they should do removals as well as asylum processing and defending the border. The authors of the new clause seem to think that the Border Security Commander should be not only independent, but virtually all-seeing, all-singing and all-dancing, and that they should do absolutely everything with which the entire immigration and asylum system is currently charged. That is overreach, to say the least.

The new clause also suggests that the commander should remove people to a safe third place within six months for processing. In all their years in office, the Conservatives never managed to achieve any of those things. To put them into a new clause for a Government that has been in office for seven months—a Government who were left with the most appalling mess, with an asylum system that had crashed and had massive backlogs, and with a structure in the Illegal Migration Act that made it illegal for us to process any new arrivals who claimed asylum after March 2023—and to complain that we have not sent small boat arrivals home fast enough takes the biscuit.

Dame Angela Eagle

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It is fairly astonishing to have a new clause that puts the Border Security Commander in charge of the entire asylum and deportation systems and asks him, in legislation, to achieve processing times that the Conservative party never achieved when they were in Government. It falls into the trap of empowering the Border Security Commander to such an extent that he seems to have to take over most of the Home Office. That is not really what we intend to do with this Bill. New clause 21 would result in a fairly astonishing increase in not only the power, but the reach of the Border Security Commander. That would be massively disruptive and would probably lead to an outcome similar to the collapse of the asylum system, of which we have had to clean up the mess.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Not for the first time today, I agree with my hon. Friend. When the time comes, we will be voting against this new clause.

Dame Angela Eagle

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New clause 21(1)(c) talks about:

“making arrangements with a safe third country for the removal of a person who enters the United Kingdom without leave, or with leave that was obtained by deception”

and new clause 21(1)(b) mentions:

“ensuring that a decision is taken on a claim by a person under subsection (1)(a) within six months of the person’s arrival in the United Kingdom”.

If that is not asking the Border Security Commander to take over the workings of the asylum system, I am not sure I understand what the new clause is trying to do.

Dame Angela Eagle

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But how on earth could asking the Border Security Commander to have regard to those things lead him or her to deal with border security? The new clause would take away the focus in the current Home Office arrangements on immigration enforcement and the asylum system. The new clause says that the Border Security Commander must have regard to all the processes in areas of the Department they have nothing to do with. It would upend working relationships. It would make it impossible and incoherent to deliver any kind of—

Dame Angela Eagle

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I think, Dr Murrison, you would probably not be very pleased with me if I started to talk about existential challenges at the heart of Conservative thinking, much as I would like to do so. I hope that I have given some reasons why new clause 21 should not stand part of the Bill.

Dame Angela Eagle

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The Prime Minister made it clear right at the beginning of his time in office that the Government will be bound by the international obligations that we have signed up to. I hope that gives the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] Well, he is a sceptical man, as I would expect, but I have said what I have said about that. Is he suggesting that we should change the law as a result of the High Court?

Dame Angela Eagle

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As I said earlier, the Border Security Commander and the Border Security Command will work within the confines of international obligations and human rights law.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Clauses 3 and 9, taken together, outline the functions of the Border Security Commander and the directions given to the commander by the Secretary of State. Clause 3 ensures that the commander has the ability to bring partners together to provide an authoritative source of information on priority and emerging threats to border security. Through the strategic priority-setting process, the commander, working collaboratively with partners and with consent from the Secretary of State, will have the authority to issue strategic priorities on border security, to which partners must have regard. That creates a new mechanism to ensure that there is a whole of Government understanding and a collective response to border security threats.

The provisions of clause 3 recognise the varied responsibilities of partners, and deliberately ensure that the duty does not prevent partner authorities from exercising their existing constituted mandates or from setting their own wider priorities. The UK intelligence community are exempted from definition as partner authorities, in order to ensure that they can carry out their functions without constitutional conflict. However, UKIC will continue to work closely with the Border Security Command on border security matters, and arrangements are being developed, and will be agreed by the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, to ensure that that takes place. Such arrangements are required by clause 5.

Clause 9 builds on that by ensuring that the Secretary of State can hold the Border Security Commander to account for the delivery of improved border security outcomes. As an elected official, the Secretary of State is accountable to the Cabinet and to Parliament, and can assure that the actions of the commander are being carried out in the interests of the British public.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Duty to prepare annual reports

Dame Angela Eagle

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Amendment 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, would require the Border Security Commander to clearly outline how they have paid due regard to the Human Rights Act and the European convention on action against trafficking by including that information in the annual report that is laid before Parliament. As discussed when we debated amendment 1, the Border Security Commander will be a public authority within the meaning of section 6 of the Human Rights Act, and must act in compatibility with the human rights legislation. The commander will be aware of the risks in relation to trafficking and modern slavery through their work, and will continue to comply with the obligations, as part of the Government, under the European convention on action against trafficking in human beings. Therefore, it is unnecessary to detail explicitly that that should be in the report. That does not mean that it will not be, as the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire recognised when he withdrew amendment 1. He has made his point powerfully.

Amendment 14 would create a requirement for the Border Security Commander to include in the annual report a range of statistics relating to the new offences created by the Bill, and wider relevant statistics in relation to irregular entrants who have arrived via a sea crossing, and to deportations. The amendment proposes that the annual report must state how the commander has carried out the functions of their office in the financial year, and set out the commander’s views on the performance of the border security system, with particular reference to the strategic priorities that have been set.

The clause envisages that the report will be laid before Parliament and published. That will provide public and parliamentary accountability for the work of the Border Security Commander across all threats, although the strategic priorities may change over time as the threats against which the commander will need to report evolve.

Amendment 14 in the name of the hon. Member for Stockton West is quite prescriptive about what should be in the report, and includes a range of statistics. In the UK, we have quarterly publication of immigration statistics, which are organised by the Home Office and under the code of practice of the independent UK Statistics Authority. Statistics are regularly made available about what is going on in this area. The hon. Gentleman wants such statistics to be published, under statute, in the annual report that the commander puts before Parliament but, with all due respect, I think it is important that the commander is able to write his report himself without primary legislation directing him what to put in it, especially given that those statistics are regularly made available and are well looked at and reported upon. What the hon. Gentleman is suggesting is cumbersome and would not assist in ensuring that we have parliamentary and public accountability for the commander’s performance.

The hon. Gentleman also quoted from the assessments of the number of prison places that would be created by the new crimes that we will talk about when we debate subsequent clauses. I am not sure what he does not understand about serious crime prevention orders or interim serious crime prevention orders. The idea of some of the new powers—the counter terror-style powers, which we will talk about in due course—is that they will prevent crossings and crimes from happening in the first place. They will allow the police and the National Crime Agency to intervene much earlier and to stop crime happening. In those circumstances, there may be a lesser sentence rather than a prison sentence, but lives would be saved and exploitation would be prevented. That is the nature of counter terror-style powers.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that the annual report will allow public and parliamentary accountability for the work of Border Security Command and that he will not press his amendment, as it would create too inflexible an annual report for the commander, with too much outside interference through primary legislation.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Clause 5 places a duty on partner authorities to co-operate with the commander in the carrying out of their functions. The commander is tasked with maximising the effectiveness of our collective response to border security threats, which requires a whole of Government response and will be enabled by the clause. It is recognised that partner authorities have wide-ranging functions that extend well beyond tackling border security threats. The duty set out in the clause extends only so far as is appropriate and compatible with partner authorities’ other functions. That ensures that partners across the system are working in lockstep to enhance border security, while continuing to enable the vital work undertaken by partners beyond border security matters.

The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)

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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. It will be the first occasion of many, I am sure. I hope you enjoy chairing Bill Committees as much as I enjoyed doing so in the previous Parliament.

Clause 5 places a duty on partner authorities to co-operate with the commander in the carrying out of their functions. The commander is tasked with maximising the effectiveness of our collective response to border security threats. That requires a whole-of-Government response, which will be enabled by this clause. It is recognised that partner authorities have wide-ranging functions that extend well beyond tackling border security threats. The duty set out in the clause extends only so far as it is appropriate and compatible with partner authorities’ other functions. That ensures that partner authorities across the system work in lockstep to enhance border security while continuing to enable the vital work undertaken by partners in other contexts, beyond border security matters.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

The Board

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Clause 6 places a duty on the Border Security Commander to establish and maintain a board to assist with the exercise of their functions. That unique forum enables senior representatives from across the border security system to convene to shape our collective response to organised immigration crime and other border security threats. The commander will consult the board when developing strategic priorities for border security, which makes the board a crucial forum in shaping the whole-of-Government response to these threats.

Dame Angela Eagle

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The Bill is a framework within which the Border Security Commander operates, but it is not prescriptive because the people who drafted the Bill could not see what the priorities will be in the future. It is a framework that enables the Border Security Commander to respond to what is going on at the time, without limiting him.

There has been a common theme throughout the speeches from the Opposition. They seem to feel that somehow the commander does not have sufficient empowerment to command the border security system, that he is not independent enough, and that he somehow cannot get things done, but the functions outlined in these clauses are not the sole capabilities of the commander’s role as empowered by the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister.

The Border Security Command is not an operational entity, but a strategic leader for border security. Representatives on the board would be Departments such as the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Department for Transport, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Cabinet Office, as well as operational partners such as the National Crime Agency, the UK intelligence community and security services, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement and policing. Those kinds of people will be convened for a strategic purpose. It makes sense, if we think about it, that the commander can bring these people together as and when he or she sees a need for them to meet, depending on what is on the agenda and what is going on.

The commander is already using the role and its associated capabilities to deploy key functions to lead on border security across Government, including deploying additional resources across partners, such as the additional £150 million for border security that has been announced by the Government, and developing border security legislation to be used by operational partners, such as the powers in this Bill. In last week’s evidence sessions, we heard from operational partners such as the police, the NCA and the Crown Prosecution Service on how useful they felt the powers in the Bill would be in their everyday operational capacity. The operational commander can also lead on international engagement diplomatically, and has accompanied both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary on journeys to Italy, Germany and Iraq to ensure that we have meetings at the highest levels with people in other jurisdictions, to try to get more co-operation going to deal with the cross-border issues of border security.

The Bill provides a new significant wide-ranging power to lead the border security system strategically, which is being done for the first time. All partner authorities, defined as those public bodies with functions in relation to border security, must, as a legal duty, have regard to the strategic direction set by the commander. However, this works best if there is not a battle between different bits of the Government—if there is co-operation and co-ordination—and that is what these structures are designed to try to achieve. The Bill will, for the first time, provide a clear and long-term vision for border security, bringing together and providing leadership to all parts of the system that work to maintain the integrity of our border and immigration systems both domestically and internationally.

I hope that that has provided a little more explanation for the Opposition on the thinking and approach behind some of the powers set out in the clauses we are considering, and most specifically in clause 6.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7

Delegation by the Commander

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Clause 7 ensures that the functions of the Border Security Commander can be delegated to an authorised civil servant when required. Flexibility in the exercise of these functions will support the most efficient and effective delivery of the Government’s actions to tackle border security threats.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I set out in some detail in my reply on the previous clause some of the things that the commander is involved with, including some of the meetings he is involved in convening and the purpose of those strategic meetings. During the evidence we heard last week from operational partners, both the NCA and the police chiefs set out some of the benefits they felt there would be.

Dame Angela Eagle

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The Opposition have asked which bits of the commander’s functions may be delegated and to what level. In theory, it can be any of them. We are trying to ensure that there are no issues in primary legislation that would mean something is prevented from being delegated that would have been effective.

I do not think that the hon. Member for Stockton West would expect me to go into great detail about what might happen with delegation in the future, but I can give an example. If there was to be a high-level visit to Iraq to conclude a memorandum of understanding on returns and activity against organised immigration crime, and the commander was detained elsewhere, it would be possible to delegate that function to somebody who would then go in his place.

We are trying to get to the stage in legislation where we create the commander and give flexibility as to how the job can be put into effect in scenarios that may crop up, without being too prescriptive. I hope that the hon. Member for Stockton West will accept that example of the sort of thing that may crop up.

Dame Angela Eagle

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My hon. Friend is right that circumstances often crop up that require this kind of provision. All clause 7 does is allow it, so I commend the clause to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8

Designation of an Interim Border Security Commander

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Clause 8 ensures that the functions of the Border Security Commander can continue to be exercised in the event that the post of commander is vacant for a period, or if the commander is incapacitated or temporarily unavailable. This ensures that the work to enhance our border security and undermine the people smuggling gangs threatening our borders continues in the event that the post either falls vacant or is effectively vacant for a period.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Clause 8 is clearly there in the event of the commander being incapacitated or ill and unable to do the job for a while. It is not unusual that people have life experiences that mean they have to take time off work. In that kind of instance, an interim commander could be appointed, pending the return of the role holder, who may be receiving medical treatment or may be incapacitated in some way. There may also be a gap between the resignation or retirement of a commander and reappointment, although one would hope that planning ahead would mean that that would be minimised. The clause addresses the practical issue of having an interim in case there were an issue with appointment.

The interim commander would, obviously, be expected to have the skills to do the job to the full extent. No time limit has been put into primary legislation because if there were a hard timeline it would make it harder in practical terms to get a replacement. It is very much a horses for courses thing, allowing there to be an interim in the case of incapacity, retirement or replacement while the replacement is advertised for and appointed in the usual manner.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10

Exclusion of application to the armed forces

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Clause 10 states that the duties in this chapter of the Bill do not apply to the armed forces, clause 11 makes amendments to the Data Protection Act 2018, and clause 12 provides definitions of the terms used. The work of the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence makes a significant contribution to the security of the United Kingdom. The Border Security Commander will work across Government, including with the Ministry of Defence, to enhance our border security. Clause 10 recognises the unique work of the armed forces. While the Border Security Commander will work closely with the armed forces, including through the military aid to the civil authorities process, it is correct that the important duty of our armed forces remains independent from the functions outlined in this chapter. That is achieved by clause 10.

Clause 11 amends the Data Protection Act 2018 to ensure that the Border Security Commander may process data for law enforcement purposes. That information is vital to build a shared understanding of the nature of border security threats and inform the priority setting process. Clause 12 provides definitions for the terms used in chapter 1 of the Bill for the reader’s understanding and to ensure clarity on definitions during the implementation and operation of the legislation.

Dame Angela Eagle

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The hon. Member asked why the Border Security Commander should be processing data collected from electronic devices. He will know that later in the Bill, there are some new powers that involve collecting, in an intelligence-led way, data from suspected organised immigration criminals. The point is to ensure that data is collected in a lawful manner, and that is why clause 11 allows the Border Security Commander to process data for law enforcement purposes. Some of that is about the counter terrorism-style powers, which we will discuss in relation to later clauses—I do not want to have that debate here—but it is really an enabling power to put beyond doubt the legality of the collection of such material.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 11 and 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 13

Supplying articles for use in immigration crime

Dame Angela Eagle

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1971.

Dame Angela Eagle

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We have had an interesting debate, and Members have come at this complex problem from different angles. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire would give everyone who gets on the boats the benefit of the doubt, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent was somewhere towards the opposite end of that spectrum, and we had everything in between.

The important thing that we need to get right in this Bill is that we must give those who are trying to prevent dangerous boat crossings all the tools they tell us they need to help them deal with the criminal gangs that have been allowed to take hold across the channel and who are currently perpetrating this evil trade. We all agree that we want to stop that.

I am starting by talking about what we agree on, and I will then explain how the clauses will assist. We all agree that the right way to go about this is to ensure that the decisions about who is allowed to come into our country are taken by the authorities in the country, rather than by sophisticated, internationally organised criminal gangs with supply chains that go across many jurisdictions, and which make millions out of their illegal trade.

I want to give the Committee a couple of examples to put some flesh on the bones of what we are trying to do with the clauses in this group. Although people may think they are wide-ranging, their purpose is not to criminalise every asylum seeker, or even the vast majority of asylum seekers. Our approach will be intelligence-led. The National Crime Agency and others who police our borders have told us that these powers will assist them in doing the things they most want to do. The NCA gave evidence last week in which it said that its strategy is to prevent, which is to deter participation in organised immigration crime; to pursue, which is to disrupt the way that organised criminals work; to protect, which is to detect and act before the damage has been done—not wait until there are deaths in the channel, but stop small boats being launched in the first place—and to prepare, which is to manage and deal with the issues.

I am going to read into the record a couple of examples, to give Members an insight into what we are trying to achieve. These powers are short of those in section 25 of the Immigration Act 1971, because they relate to preparatory acts, which is what these clauses deal with. These are two case studies from the National Crime Agency. The first relates to the offence of handling articles. In November 2024, a man called Amanj Hasan Zada, who organised cross-channel small boat crossings from his home in Lancashire, was jailed for 17 years after being found guilty of people smuggling charges following an investigation by the National Crime Agency. Investigators were able to link him to three separate crossings made from France to the UK in November and December 2023, and he was convicted under section 25. Each crossing involved Kurdish migrants who had travelled through eastern Europe into Germany, Belgium and then France.

It is possible that the reasonable suspicion element meant that investigators would have met the requirements to arrest and charge him earlier, ahead of the section 25 powers becoming an option, if the new offences had been on the statute book when this was going on. This man was also moving between the UK and Iraq regularly, meaning that these powers would have assisted investigators. He was overseas, but he had access to some of these articles when he was in the UK, so he would have been in the scope of the offence, and we would have been able to interdict and arrest him earlier and prevent those crossings from happening. Part of the idea of the new offences is that they are intelligence-led, but they relate to preparatory acts. They are attempting to disrupt before the more serious section 25 offence happens, and therefore they will prevent some of the damage done if that is allowed to happen because the authorities do not have enough evidence to arrest on the more serious offence.

Let me tell the Committee about another case study. An investigation into an Albanian organised crime gang using small boats to facilitate illegal immigration to the UK led to the arrest of an individual who was identifying rigid-hulled inflatable boats for sale on behalf of that gang. The gang subsequently bought and used the identified boats for organised immigration crime purposes. The individual was never directly involved in the movement of migrants or the purchase of those boats; he simply sourced them. The NCA provided evidence that they were on the periphery of the organised criminal gang and were researching for the gang to support their criminality. Despite that evidence, he was never directly involved in the actual facilitation, so the case could not go through to charging.

The preparatory acts offence would have enabled prosecution in that case, as the individual took part in the research and planning of acts to facilitate organised immigration crime, despite not being directly involved in the facilitation and illegal entry of migrants. Both the type of information and the circumstances the information was collected under would be captured by the new offence, and the evidence that the NCA had would have been sufficient for a sentence of up to five years.

We are talking about doing prevention work, to disrupt, to interdict and to stop some of this stuff happening before it has reached its full maturity and people’s lives have been put at risk in the channel. It is a different approach. To sit, watch and wait until something has happened and people have perhaps died is one way of doing it, but the entire approach of the counter-terrorism style powers, of which the powers in this clause are an example, is what the NCA and other people have asked us to assist them with. They see the pattern in their information gathering: how these things are organised, what the patterns are, who is involved and how they do their business. They have demonstrated to me and others that these kinds of powers would be really useful in a preventive way and may very well save lives. I hope that giving those two examples will mean that we have more of a handle on the kind of things that the clauses are trying to do.

The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire was worried that the powers will criminalise all asylum seekers. That is not the intention. The intention of these powers is to be completely intelligence-led and focused on perpetrators, whether they are on the periphery or directly involved. More than 95% of people whom we know of who arrive illegally on small boats claim asylum. The hon. Member’s amendments, which would take all people who claim asylum out of consideration of these offences, would be an obvious way of avoiding the offences being brought to bear and could be used by any of the people who are involved in organised immigration crime to avoid the powers being used against them. Therefore, while I am sure it was not his intention at all, the effect of the amendments is to wreck the approach to prevention and disruption that these powers represent in the Bill.

I want to be clear—it is important that I put this on the record, so I will say it again—that it is not the intention to target asylum seekers with these new offences. The offences do not penalise individuals for entering illegally any more than they are penalised already, but they criminalise the conduct of activities connected to facilitation and illegal entry offences through the supply or handling of articles. In practice, the focus will be intelligence-led and targeted at those who law enforcement believe to be working in connection with organised criminal networks. Believe you me, Mr Stuart, those networks exist in the UK and they come across on small boats themselves. They also travel between the UK and some of the countries of origin they are working with. We know that that is exactly what happens because we can track and follow some of them. It is therefore important that we can bring these powers to bear. We know there are individuals who have claimed asylum in the UK and operated criminal activity from within the UK as part of a wider criminal gang with networks overseas in order to facilitate smuggling into the UK—I have just given the Committee an example. That is a phenomenon we are aware of today and we cannot exclude anyone with an asylum claim from the scope of these new offences, as the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire would want us to, regardless of the circumstances.

Excluding asylum seekers fuels abuse and exploitation of the asylum system, as well as the intentional frustration of our criminal justice system, with those involved in the supply and handling of articles able to claim asylum on arrival or arrest and therefore evade prosecution. I am sure that that was not the hon. Member’s intention, but I hope he will also take at least some comfort from what I have said about this power not being applied to everybody, but instead being very focused and intelligence-led. We cannot provide blanket exemptions. I hope given the explanation, he will therefore withdraw the amendments.

Turning more broadly to what the clauses will achieve in practice, clause 13 creates a new offence of supplying or offering to supply an article where the individual knows or suspects that the article is to be used in relation to an offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, which covers illegal entry, or section 25, which covers the facilitation of unlawful immigration.

Criminal smuggling gangs are using wide international and transnational networks to supply items for their criminal ventures. The new offence is intended to allow law enforcement to target those who act in a way that removes themselves from the direct act of people smuggling, so as to allow them to be caught under existing legislation. It will allow for earlier intervention, as in the example I have just used, potentially before boats have even been launched and lives risked. That is the prevention side.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Will the hon. Gentleman not take my word that the offences will be intelligence-led? They are not targeting all asylum seekers, but they certainly would target someone coming over on a boat who may claim asylum, who has been involved in an organised immigration gang, and who has been organising the supplies for it.

Dame Angela Eagle

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The provisions in clause 16 create an additional tool to act earlier to disrupt criminal gangs smuggling people into the UK. The new offence targets specified preparatory activities associated with people smuggling. These activities relate to the collection, recording and possession, viewing or accessing of information that is likely to be useful to a person organising or preparing for a journey of more than one person into the UK, where their entry or arrival constitutes an offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971. These specified activities must also be conducted in circumstances giving rise to reasonable suspicion that the information being collected, recorded, possessed, viewed or accessed will be used in organising or preparing for such a journey.

This clause is levelled strongly against people-smuggling gangs and their associates. It includes a defence for someone of undertaking these specified activities for their own journey only. Also included as a defence is a non-exhaustive list of reasonable excuses, where one express excuse is conducting these activities to carry out or to prepare to carry out the rescue of a person from danger or serious harm. The maximum sentence for this offence is five years’ imprisonment.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I take my hon. Friend’s point. This clause is very much about being able to capture preparatory work for any effort to evade our immigration laws and bring people over in small boats, illegally putting their lives at risk and potentially costing lives in return for money.

This clause is about a wide range of potential research, but there are also explicit safeguards within it that are sufficient to protect individual migrants and refugees, or families of refugees, trying to help family members to flee danger or serious harm. The defence that a person is conducting these activities exclusively in preparation for their own journey protects individuals from falling foul of this law. The clause is explicitly focused on and aimed at the work done by gang-affiliated facilitators of immigration offences.

The express reasonable excuse of

“carrying out, or preparing for the carrying out of, a rescue of a person from danger or serious harm”

may—depending on the circumstances—protect the families of refugees wanting to help their loved ones flee. There is also an express reasonable excuse for a person

“acting on behalf of an organisation which…aims to assist asylum-seekers, and…does not charge for its services.”

The list of reasonable excuses in the Bill is not exhaustive, so it is very much a question of looking at the information that has been gathered and making a judgment, knowing that the idea of this offence is to focus specifically on organised immigration criminality, not the individuals who may be asylum seekers or may be being trafficked.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Clause 17 provides for the offences set out in clauses 13 and 14—the supply and handling of articles for immigration crime—and clause 16—the collecting of information for immigration crime—to apply to activities committed both inside and outside the UK, regardless of the nationality of the person by whom they are done. The activities criminalised by these offences are often carried out overseas, as well as in the UK, by perpetrators of various nationalities to facilitate people smuggling to the UK. This clause will strengthen the offences, enhancing the ability to disrupt those involved in this trade, indiscriminate of their nationality and the location of their crime.

Clause 17 also makes provisions for, where an offence under clauses 13, 14 or 16 is committed outside the UK, proceedings to be taken in the UK. For application in Scotland, this clause provides that those proceedings are to be made in accordance with the relevant processes and bodies of the devolved Administration. Finally, this clause provides that section 3 of the Territorial Waters Jurisdiction Act 1878, which requires consent from the Secretary of State for certain prosecutions of non-UK nationals on territorial waters, does not apply. In doing so, the impacts of these offences are not narrowed and law enforcement is able to pursue perpetrators of these offences when committed on territorial waters.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I thank the hon. Lady for her observations. In practice, the clause allows for prosecution where an offence was committed overseas. It may well rely on evidence sharing from an international partner. She is right to talk about the network of CPS prosecutors across other jurisdictions.

In the time that I have been in the Home Office, we have been strengthening those ties and growing them further. We have done a lot of work via arrangements such as the agreement we came to with the Italians; the German agreement; the work we have done with the Calais group; the information we are sharing in and around the Balkan countries about the routes that go through those countries; the work that the Home Secretary and the Border Security Commander have done in not only Italy, but Iraq, the Kurdish region and Tunisia and some of the other countries that tend to be countries of transit. We are focusing more and more on how we can co-operate operationally.

Some of that work involves cross-country and cross-jurisdiction work to hit particular organised immigration crime across the piece on a set day. There have been some very good examples of cross-jurisdictional days of action. The muscles in this area are strengthening and being worked more. This clause is an added power that will make it easier for us to continue that work.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Yes. When things are cross-jurisdictional and cross-country, one has to be able to co-operate with other jurisdictions with some respect for their particular prosecutorial approach in order to be able to share information and work together operationally and diplomatically to deal with the significant challenges that organised immigration crime presents. The Government certainly want to renew and strengthen their approach in that area, and have made a good start.

People should not underestimate how often people who break this law and would fall foul of this increase in jurisdiction come to visit the UK. It is possible that we could pick them up and charge them here and, in some instances, follow them and wait for them when they arrive. The extension of jurisdiction, which is the essence of clause 17, will provide us once more with what we hope will be an extremely effective new tool that will help us to disrupt and begin to dismantle some of the organised immigration criminal gangs.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Martin McCluskey.)

The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)

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It has been a while since the sitting began, and it is easy to overlook that I have not been up on my feet so far. We have had an interesting debate. The amendments before us range from, at one end, the Opposition, whose amendments seek to criminalise everyone who gets in a small boat and presumably cart them directly to prison, through to the other end of the argument, represented with his usual passion by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, who feels that, if someone is an asylum seeker, they should be exempt from being judged at all on the behaviour that happens on the boat.

I will deal with some of those points in turn, but I also want to compliment my colleagues who have made their own comments and some very important points in this debate. It is important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh said, that we are clear-eyed about what is happening in the channel. We can be romantic about it in many ways, as the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire often appear to be, or we can regard all those who come over as criminals and a threat, but the truth is somewhere in between.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East made a moving speech about the realities of what can happen in these circumstances; it is easy to forget, when we are sat in a nice warm Committee Room—although it is not always warm, facing as it does on to the river. Imagine ending up in the water in the channel, Mr Stuart; you can last only so long. You could easily have a heart attack in that cold water and not be resuscitated. Clearly, if you are a child, or vulnerable in any other way, then that is likely to happen—and it will happen to you first.

My hon. Friends the Members for Bassetlaw, for Clwyd East and for Dover and Deal made important points about the realities too. I will come on to what the Government are trying to do with this offence and why it is in the Bill, but I will deal with the amendments first. I hope I will be able to answer some of the questions that have been asked during this important debate—[Interruption.] I also hope that my voice is going to last out.

Amendment 15 focuses on the length of the sentence attached to clause 18 and seeks to increase the sentence from six to 14 years where an irregular entrant arrival has caused or created a risk of serious personal injury or death to others during a sea crossing to the UK. Clause 18 introduces a new criminal offence that is to be inserted into section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971. The current sentence for the offence of arriving in breach of a deportation order under section 24(A1) of the Immigration Act is five years.

Because clause 18 will be inserted into section 24 of the Act, the intention of the clause is to ensure that, given the egregious and serious natures of the acts committed under the new offence, the maximum sentencing is increased, albeit remaining in line with the existing sentencing framework in section 24 of the Act. The issues about the length of sentence are all about keeping sentencing in that section of the Immigration Act coherent. Grabbing extra, lengthier sentences out of the air to insert them into the Act can create inconsistency and mess up the structures of sentencing involved in the Act, making it less coherent than it should be. The sentence of five years was reached after discussions with partners about all the sentences and offences in this particular area, and it rightly reflects that coherence.

An increased sentence of six years is considered to be appropriate for the endangerment offence. It furthers the deterrence aim of the policy, but is not so severe as to deter prosecutors from bringing a prosecution in the first instance. That is another area in which the rhetoric of even longer sentences deters prosecutors from bringing charges at all. We have seen that with the facilitation offences, where the introduction of a life sentence has led to fewer prosecutions being pursued; prosecutors think that for a sentence of that length, more obvious evidence has to be accrued, so they charge fewer people. An increased sentence can sometimes have a perverse effect on the system. We think that the sentence in the Bill is in keeping with the Immigration Act and is about right.

Dame Angela Eagle

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Yes, and it is not for me to get into the head of the hon. Member for Stockton West. Perhaps he will talk to us about why he picked that particular number. I agree with the hon. Member for—is it Worthing? [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Woking—I knew it began with a W, and my own constituency begins with a W, so we are there or thereabouts in the dictionary.

Similarly, amendment 16 seeks to increase the sentence from five years to 14 years where an irregular migrant or arrival has caused or created a risk of serious personal injury or death to others during a sea crossing to the UK and is entering without the requisite leave to enter, entry clearance or electronic travel authorisation. As with the approach taken to those who arrive in breach of a deportation order, and as discussed in relation to amendment 15, clause 18 will provide an increased sentence compared with the offences under section 24(B1), (D1) and (E1) of the Immigration Act.

Dame Angela Eagle

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I will try to give the hon. Gentleman some insight. I was going to come on to this when addressing the clause itself, but it is in the Bill because we have perceived a change in behaviour in some areas.

There has been an increase in physical aggression towards other people, including migrants and third parties. There is a lot more violence on the beaches against French police. There is intimidating and controlling behaviour on the boats. People are preventing others from disembarking or calling for help when the boat gets into difficulty. There are physical acts that result in harm being caused to another person either while boarding a boat or while on a boat. People are being pushed off boats, including in shallow French territorial waters. The pilots sometimes decide to continue on to the UK even when there have been fatalities or serious harm on the boat. We are now seeing a range of behaviours that clause 18 will allow us to address.

I will address amendment 5, but the view of the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire is that no asylum seeker should be charged with this new criminal offence, which would render clause 18 unworkable and pointless, as 95% of people who come across on small boats claim asylum. How one behaved on the boat across will be in the purview of clause 18, whether it is dangling children over the side or forcing women and children to sit in the middle—often the middle of the boats come free and collapse, so the women and children are the first to die. Where women and children are forced to sit in the middle, they sometimes arrive in the UK with horrific burns because of the combination of fuel and seawater, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said.

I simply do not agree with the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire that, just because someone will claim asylum when they get to the UK, none of their behaviour on the way over should have any bearing on what happens when they get here. Clause 18, which creates a new criminal offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act, will not criminalise everyone who makes these crossings. It would be pointless and completely unworkable if we sought to do that, as the Opposition amendments do. It is about addressing, discouraging and deterring the acts that cause or create a risk of serious injury or death to others, which we are now seeing from individuals travelling to the UK by small boats.

There have to be consequences for anyone who further jeopardises the safety and lives of others during these dangerous crossings. There are those who insist on continuing their journey when assistance is at hand, who refuse assistance, and often, when there have been fatalities, try to prevent others from being rescued. Clause 18 addresses specific acts that create or cause a risk of serious injury or death to others during a journey. We heard in oral evidence how these journeys are being made more dangerous by such acts, and clause 18 is a response to the increasing propensity of this kind of behaviour.

There have been shocking and tragic cases of women and children being forced and intimidated into life-threatening positions during journeys that are already dangerous enough, which is exactly the type of offending that clause 18 aims to target. The approach cannot simply be to say that whatever happens on the boat, stays on the boat. The new offence is another tool designed to curb the endangerment of life. It sits alongside other activity against gangs that intentionally place people in danger by selling these crossings as a viable route to the UK. This Government take fatalities and injuries at sea extremely seriously, and we are going further than ever to try to bring an end to them.

Dame Angela Eagle

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In general, it is not expected that parents will be criminalised, but there is not a total ban on that. It will depend on what has happened and what the circumstances were. That will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. It is difficult to be more explicit about that, given that the nature of the offence represents a stricter law that is meant to deter people from making small boat crossings. It is a signal to smugglers and passengers that fatalities and injuries at sea are taken extremely seriously, so there may well be consequences for particular unacceptable behaviour of the sort that I have talked about. I would not want there to be an absolute exclusion, but I would not expect a large cohort of people to fall within the purview of the new offences.