Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
Read Full debateThursday 6th March 2025
(3 days, 14 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesBorder Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 6 March 2025 - (6 Mar 2025)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 13 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 13 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 13 - Question accordingly negatived.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I want to reinforce the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Dagenham and Rainham and for Clwyd East regarding amendment 17, tabled by the hon. Member for Stockton West. I firmly believe that the amendment actually serves to dilute the legislation.
The hon. Member does not consider the fact that many people are coerced into boats in the belief that they will be safe, because there will be lifejackets provided. However, many times those lifejackets do not meet EU or British standards, or children’s lifejackets are provided for every person on the boat—or, when people get on the boat, there are not enough lifejackets. The gangs who are using that to coerce people on to the boats should be prosecuted for that simple act.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
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.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
I am pleased that the Minister talked about the length of the sentence, which we have not talked about very much in the debate so far. Fourteen years is the maximum sentence for placing explosives with intent to cause bodily injury, and for such other offences as causing death by dangerous driving. To me, 14 years is more applicable in those cases. Does she agree? I do not understand the rationale for 14 years.
Dame Angela Eagle
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.
Pete Wishart
I am sorry to see that the Minister is still bravely struggling with a cold—the Committee has noticed. A variety of offences are available to the courts to make sure that anybody who endangers people at sea can be prosecuted. There is illegal arrival, there is facilitating the illegal entry of others, and there is what Ibrahima Bah was convicted of—gross negligence manslaughter. These offences are all currently available to the prosecutorial authorities. I do not know why the Minister feels she needs this new offence. It can only be because she has a particular target in mind against whom she wants to apply these rules. Can she confirm that?
Dame Angela Eagle
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.
Pete Wishart
I thank the Minister for her full response to the amendments before the Committee. I totally agree with her on amendment 17, and I hope the Committee rejects it. It is a ridiculous and unworkable proposition that everybody who comes to our shores should be criminalised almost immediately upon arrival.
A couple of things have been said in this debate that I want to challenge and take head on, including the idea that everything is black and white, that people are either the exploited or the exploiters. Everybody accepts that there is a grey area. I think every member of this Committee believes that those who behave in a reprehensible, appalling and awful way, whether on the small boats or in getting people on to the small boats, should rightly face the full force of the law.
The Minister is right to highlight all those examples of the dangerous behaviour that happens during some of these journeys. None of us would want people to get away with that behaviour, but the Bill does not refer to such activity, and there is nothing in the guidance or the explanatory notes. Nothing in the Bill specifies this type of behaviour. As the Bill progresses, the Minister will have to make sure it mentions such behaviour.
The other challenge with the type of activity the Minister describes is how to get the evidence. This activity is happening in the most chaotic circumstances, on small boats coming across the channel. We know these things are reported, and we know that people are arrested and face the full force of the law, but the Minister still has to convince the Committee that a new offence is needed, and that certain categories of migrant will not be caught up.
Sarah Bool
I did not hear from the Minister a response on the Law Society’s concern about parents and guardians being criminalised, and I wonder whether I could hear some thoughts on that.
Dame Angela Eagle
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.
Matt Vickers
I thank Members for their considered contributions. Effective international partnerships can be useful, but I would not want to deny anyone the right to scrutinise a partner on Twitter, particularly one to whom we pay so much money. The previous Government were right to toughen up on sentences for the worst offences. They were right to restrict prisoner release during the pandemic. That put pressure on the prison system, and that that is why the previous Government were also right to undertake the biggest prison building programme since the Victorian era. I realise that the Labour party did not agree, but it was right that the previous Government used the Nationality and Borders Act to increase the penalty for people smugglers to a life sentence.