Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for leading this debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I welcome the opportunity to put a few points on the record. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), my case load tells a sorry tale about the UK Government’s approach to migration. The volume is something to behold and it is because of their approach. Today alone, I am pulling my hair out because of someone in vain trying to help their elderly mother who has had to flee Sudan. The UK Government do not seem to be interested. I also have a wee baby stuck in Pakistan and again the UK Government do not seem to be interested. I feel often like I am banging my head off a brick wall when trying to help people who deserve the UK Government’s help. If the Minister can stop flicking through his paperwork, perhaps he will indicate whether he feels able to help with either of those thorny cases.
Kirsten Oswald
The Minister shakes his head. What a shameful way to behave. I am trying to assist people in grave need and this says everything about the UK Government’s approach to migration. It should not be like this, Minister. Migration and migrants can bring a positive benefit to our communities and people who are in the gravest peril deserve a good deal more support and respect. It is not just me and the Scottish National party saying that. Opinium polled a large number of UK adults on the Illegal Migration Bill and the people it spoke to felt that the way people seeking asylum are described in political debate is “overly negative”. I thought that was interesting because that is not what someone would believe if they stood in the Chamber and listened to the UK Government.
Kirsten Oswald
I am going to continue, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, as time is limited. We all see the impact of migration policies. There are labour shortages and skills shortages, and Scottish need is certainly not taken into account by the UK Government. Whether it is the kind of cases I talked about, floating internment camps, boat pushbacks, deportation flights or the circumventing of international law, the depths that this Government will sink to on migration are frankly depressing. They are hostile in every way. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North put that well.
The Prime Minister has had his say, too. He said:
“If you are coming here illegally, claiming sanctuary from death, torture or persecution”.
That is Orwellian doublespeak because international law determines that, if someone is fleeing death, torture or persecution, they are seeking refuge legally. Nobody is illegal. It is not only confusing in that way. The Home Office’s own logic is not logical. It said:
“Alternative accommodation options”—
that is how it puts things—
“including barges, will save the British taxpayer money.”
But the very same Home Office is set to spend up to £6 billion over two years on detention facilities and ongoing accommodation and removal costs, and Treasury insiders say that the deterrent effect has not been reliably modelled, meaning that the numbers are likely to be wrong and costs much greater. The Refugee Council correctly says that barges are
“entirely unsuitable for the needs”
of those seeking refuge and are a
“direct consequence of the chronic delays and huge backlog in the asylum system”.
Not only that, but a third of the UK’s international aid budget is actually being spent on domestic asylum costs. The system is not working because it is underpinned by policies that are simply wrong.
The Illegal Migration Bill has been widely condemned across civil and political society. A coalition of 176 civil society organisations is calling on the UK Government to immediately withdraw it because it potentially breaches multiple international conventions and agreements. That is on top of the fact that UK family reunion rules are already among the most restrictive in Europe. The Dubs scheme for refugee children was prematurely closed. Brexit—that elephant in the room that neither the Conservative Government nor the Labour Opposition want to talk about—means that Dublin family reunion applications are no longer possible. My constituents really care about this. I hear a lot from constituents who are deeply worried about why we are not showing compassion for children who seek to come here for sanctuary, and why we are turning our back and turning our face away. I understand their concerns, and I agree with them. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is “profoundly concerned” about the direction of travel, saying that it
“would amount to an asylum ban—extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the UK for people who arrive irregularly, no matter how compelling their claim”.
The chief executive of the Refugee Council is also concerned.
I spoke to the ladies from the VOICES Network whom the British Red Cross hosted here yesterday, and the main thing they want is a safe place to live for women seeking asylum. It does not seem like very much, does it? They are just looking to be treated with a bit of dignity, and the SNP wants to see migrants being given that dignity. We want them to have the right to work and to contribute to the society they call home, but they have no right to work here and no access to social security support in too many cases. The right to work, as article 23 of the universal declaration of human rights tells us, is a fundamental right, not that you would believe that here. People can apply for the right to work only after they have been waiting for more than one year, and even then very few are granted permission. People are essentially banned from working. Not only is that very unfortunate and difficult for them, but it is very unfortunate and difficult for us, as we miss out on the skills and talents that they bring with them.
The UK is an outlier. Other countries do not deal with things this way. Imagine the benefit to our NHS of allowing doctors trained elsewhere to come here and to work to look after the people here who need it. We are also completely opposed to the “no recourse to public funds” policies, which are blocking migrant groups from essential safety nets. Migrants, who are already likely to be vulnerable and in low-paid and insecure work, are therefore disproportionately likely to be at risk of destitution.
Then there are the unaccompanied children. Over 4,000 have been placed in hotels since 2021, and 200 children remain missing. That is shocking; it is inconceivable. The UK Government clearly cannot be trusted as a corporate parent, and the Scottish Government are deeply concerned about this. Scotland does take its responsibilities seriously. The Scottish Government want no part of the UK Government’s “hostile environment” approach to refugees and asylum seekers, or people who are among the most vulnerable in the world—[Laughter.] I do not know why the Minister finds this funny, because I do not think it is funny at all.
Kirsten Oswald
The Scottish Government will do absolutely what is needed for refugees if given the power to allow us to actually do so, and it is high time that the Minister stopped this damaging narrative, which is neither accurate nor fair. [Interruption.]
The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)
I join hon. Members across the House in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), the Father of the House, and the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for securing this general debate on migration. By the standards of immigration debates, it has been a thoughtful and reflective one. I plan to use the short time I have to answer directly as many of the questions raised by right hon. and hon. Members as possible.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton opened the debate with an understandable message that the UK should be a country in which those people genuinely seeking sanctuary can find safety and a new life, and we should be looking to continue to develop safe and legal routes. The Government share in that, and we believe that we have done that in recent years. Since 2015, almost 550,000 people have come to the United Kingdom on humanitarian grounds, which is more than in any comparable period in our modern history. They have come on individual country schemes, including those mentioned by many colleagues, from Ukraine, Syria and Hong Kong, and indeed on the global scheme operated on behalf of the United Kingdom by the United Nations. A small number have also come on the community sponsorship scheme, which enables any one of us, our communities or faith organisations to assist people directly in moving from places of danger to a new life in the UK. The Government strongly encourage others to take part in that if they care deeply about these issues.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton raised visa costs. I appreciate that, in particular for those people who have lived in the UK for many years and want now to settle here permanently, as well as for those who have settlement but want to obtain British citizenship. The Government believe that citizenship is important and something that everyone who lives here for a sustained period of time should aspire to. I appreciate that the costs of some of those routes are high, and we take that into account, but we have to balance that against the cost of managing the broader immigration system. It is right that the system should be as self-sustaining as possible, so that it places as low a burden as can be on the wider UK taxpayer. We have made concessions for certain types of visa. He mentioned the health and social care visa. Almost 100,000 were granted in the year ending March 2023. That visa carries a reduced fee and an expedited service for good reason.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the UKVI and its service standards. As I have said in the House on recent occasions, the UKVI is well run. It is important, as a Home Office Minister, to give credit where it is due. Not all things work well, but where they do and where the leadership is performing a strong service, it is right we recognise that. The UKVI is meeting its service standards in all regards, according to the last data I saw. It does have service standards, whether published or internal, for every type of visa or application and it is meeting those requirements.
On the hon. Gentleman’s point about labour shortages, we take them very seriously. We have to be pragmatic as a Government to ensure that business has the workers necessary to drive forward the economy. We have to recognise that net migration last year of 606,000, which included about 300,000 work visas, is very high by historic standards. That means many, many people are coming into the country for work purposes, the system is working and businesses can access that labour, but we have to balance their need for labour against shortages of housing, access to public services, in particular in the health service, and the ability of this country, like any, to integrate people successfully and to build a cohesive and united society. I am concerned that the current levels of net migration are too high and are not sustainable in the long term.
I also do not believe that it is a way to drive long-term prosperity and productivity by allowing companies, in some instances, to reach for the easy lever of foreign labour. Instead, they should be reaching for technology and automation, and above all investing in local people in the British workforce to help them into the labour market in the first instance. Those are the principles underlying the points-based system that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), the former Home Secretary, established, which allows for a degree of pragmatism through the shortage occupation list and other bespoke visa routes, such as the health and social care visa. They give us, for the first time in our modern history, the ability to make changes where necessary.
One of those changes is the change to student visas, which we announced last month. That now enables us to take action against dependants coming with students who are here on short courses, such as one-year master’s. I think that is the right decision because universities, although undoubtedly an incredible force for good here in the UK and around the world, should be primarily in the education business and not the immigration business, enabling a back route to life in the UK for individuals and their families. That is what we want to refocus the system on.
The hon. Gentleman raised, as did many others, the issue of the backlog. Let me be perfectly clear that one of the priorities for the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and me, since we came into office last year, has been reducing the backlog. To develop an efficient system, it is important to reduce the reliance on hotels, which we all agree is inappropriate, and to enable people who will ultimately be granted status the ability to get on with their lives and contribute to society here in the UK. I am confident we will be able to eliminate the legacy backlog over the course of this year. We put in place a number of further measures recently, some of which have been referenced today. We have also brought into play more resources, drawing not just on caseworkers—a growing pool of individuals in the Home Office thanks to our recruitment efforts—but on skilled workers from within the UK visa service and within the Passport Office as well, to bolster those efforts and give us a greater prospect of achieving our ultimate aim of reducing the backlog.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly spoke of the international context underlying the present situation. It was for that reason that I have been to France, Italy, Tunisia and Algeria in the last few weeks—to work with partner countries together on our shared challenge and so that UK assets, such as the National Crime Agency, Border Force and the police, can work with those countries further upstream. They will help them stop migrants from leaving transit countries such as those in north Africa and getting anywhere near the UK. That is an incredibly important part of our broader plan.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham was right to raise the question of France. It is a significant achievement in the past six months that the relationship with France has improved significantly. That has led to more interception rates and more arrests, but there is more work to be done there in our relationship with the French. We have signed other agreements with Albania and Georgia, and a memorandum with Italy. We are working with the EU to develop a partnership with respect to Frontex. I am sure that there will be other opportunities with partner countries both within Europe and beyond. That is something I personally want to take forward to deepen those relationships.
Having spoken to my opposite numbers from a range of countries in the past two weeks, it is clear that we are all grappling with a very substantial challenge. The UK is not alone and is not considered an outlier. In fact, many of the steps that we are taking, including the Rwanda policy, are attracting great interest from other countries. If it is operationalised, it is likely that other countries will seek to pursue something similar. We want to work as closely as possible with other countries to tackle this challenge together.
On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and others made about our ODA budget, it is incredibly important that we tackle illegal migration precisely because it is a very poor use of our resources. We are spending a great deal of money on things such as hotels, primarily to assist young men who have been in a place of safety such as France to come to the United Kingdom to continue their lives here. Those resources could be used far better upstream to support people in and around conflict zones, whether through international organisations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or otherwise. By tackling illegal migration, such as through the Illegal Migration Bill, we can help the United Kingdom to be a greater force for good in the world.
I am conscious that there is little time, but the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) raised concerns about the performance of the Home Office and the manner in which we house asylum seekers. We want to work with the Scottish Government and Scottish local authorities so that they can play a greater part in appropriately housing asylum seekers and refugees. We are currently in one such live discussion at the moment, and I very much hope that they will encourage their colleagues in Scotland to assist with those negotiations. I apologise for overrunning my time, Madam Deputy Speaker.