Immigration Reforms

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer in the Chair]

[Relevant documents: Sixth Report of the Home Affairs Committee, Earned Settlement: Examining the Government’s proposed reforms, HC 1409; and oral evidence taken before the Home Affairs Committee on 16 December 2025, on Asylum and Returns Policy, HC 1579.]

14:30

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered immigration reforms.

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. What an extraordinary few weeks we have had in the area of home affairs and immigration. It has been quite breathtaking. It is difficult to grasp the scale and ferocity of the Home Secretary’s assault on immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the past few weeks. It is simply astonishing that in a few short weeks she has turned nearly all our assumptions about refugee status and asylum totally on their head. She has embarked on one of the biggest set of reforms on asylum and immigration that we have witnessed in the past few years, and all without one Government-sponsored debate on the Floor of the House and without one single vote for Members.

We had barely caught our breath from the outrageous changes to indefinite leave to remain and its associated earned settlement restrictions when there was an almost daily blitz of further cruel and restrictive measures. In case the House has forgotten, I will refresh Members on what has been announced, because it is totally extraordinary. First, at the beginning of March the Home Secretary arbitrarily announced that refugee status was to be completely redefined, from something that had always been akin to a permanent status to something that would be temporary. It was to be reduced from five years to 30 months, with the proviso that people may be returned to their countries of origin if the Home Secretary, exclusively and on her own, deemed those countries to be safe.

Let us think about what that will do to people and families. It will lock people into years of insecurity, denying them the opportunity to rebuild shattered lives. It will prolong uncertainty for refugee families, making it almost impossible to make decisions about education for children and for these poor souls to find positive employment. What employer is going to spend money hiring, training and investing in people if there is a chance they will be booted out of the country within the next two and a half years?

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. Is he concerned, like me, about what the reforms will mean for the survivors of abuse who have fled persecution abroad? Does he agree that perpetrators already weaponise immigration status against their victims, and that removing refugee protection will lead only to survivors having even less access to support and being too scared of deportation to leave?

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Lady is spot on, and entirely right to raise those issues. The changes will effectively retraumatise so many asylum seekers and refugees who have already experienced of all sorts of abusive arrangements. I am glad the Minister is here to listen to the hon. Lady’s remarks.

Only a couple of days after the announcement on refugee status, the Home Secretary announced what she called an “emergency brake” on visa applications from nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan. Those are some of the most dangerous countries in the world, where conflict, oppression and human rights abuses are an everyday feature and continue to drive people from their homes. The Home Secretary says she wants to expand safe and legal routes, but at one stroke she took away meaningful safe and legal routes from some of the most dangerous countries in the world.

Not content with that, the Home Secretary then went on to announce a pilot scheme offering financial inducements for failed asylum seekers to return to their country of origin. It was a voluntary scheme, but only in the context of, “If you refuse that inducement, you may be forcibly removed.” The proposal is chillingly reminiscent of what we are seeing in the United States, where Trump’s paramilitary Immigration and Customs Enforcement force is forcibly evicting people who are on the wrong side of the refugee and asylum system there.

The Home Secretary actually said—I could not believe it when I heard it—that she is currently consulting on how removals can be carried out “humanely and effectively”, particularly where children are involved. Let us pause and think for a minute about the forcible removal of families in the United Kingdom where children might be involved.

Even after that—this was in only one week—it went on. Next, the Home Secretary announced changes to the law that will mean it is no longer a legal duty to provide financial support to asylum seekers. Payments will stop for anyone working illegally, anyone convicted of a crime or anyone with independent financial means. I am sure people listen to that and think, “That sounds fair enough and pretty reasonable. If people are in any of those categories, it’s quite right that they shouldn’t receive Government support.”

But that is only until we consider what is required for an asylum seeker to work in the United Kingdom. They can work only with the permission of the Home Office, and securing that permission is a complex, byzantine, bureaucratic task that some people in the asylum community say is barely possible. The only thing that will be achieved is more people being put into destitution. If we look at the Trussell Trust or any of the food banks, we see that the number of asylum seekers who are now seeking assistance and help is going through the roof—and it will only go further.

[Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)]

Care workers such as Grace Reji work hard to provide an invaluable service to the most vulnerable people in my constituency. She has a family, but when faced with a possible five-year increase in the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain, carers like her worry that they will be forced to leave. Coleg Elidyr, an education and care setting in my constituency, looks after young people with special needs and also relies on migrant staff. Does the hon. Member agree that we cannot underestimate the long-term damage of the Government’s ill-thought-out immigration policies on workforce stability and services for the most vulnerable in our society?

[Pete Wishart]

I absolutely agree. I am really pleased that the hon. Lady raised that issue, and she is right to do so. I have received countless briefings from a number of organisations, including the Royal College of Midwives, that are genuinely concerned about where this leads. Scotland is in the early stages of depopulation; just wait till they get it down here. If the Government think immigration is a bad thing, just wait till they get to the negative consequences of emigration. We are starting to get there, because it looks like immigration this year will be net zero. The rest of the UK is about to experience the end of population growth, which will put all sorts of strains on demographic issues throughout this country. The hon. Lady is right to raise that point.

It is not only that people are being forced out; I have high-value constituents from Sri Lanka who are just going home. They have had enough. They cannot be bothered dealing with a Government who treat them so shabbily and shoddily and do not see any value in what they do. That is what the Government are doing with the immigration changes.

All this essentially delivers prolonged uncertainty, fear and anxiety in the asylum system. It will undermine every and all positive efforts towards integration. It will leave a generation of people living permanently in limbo, constantly looking over their shoulder and fearing that, at any moment, they may be forcibly removed. Whole communities that have already been traumatised by having to leave their home, sometimes in the most extraordinary conditions, fleeing oppression, with their own lives sometimes at risk, feel they are being traumatised all over again.

But do not worry—the Home Secretary tells us this is the plan. She says we have to make the UK an unattractive country for people who want to come here, as if they could make hostile-environment UK even more unattractive. That is the Government’s mission, and by God are they making a good go of it! They are not just making the UK an unattractive place for asylum seekers; they are making it an unattractive place for all of us who have to live in this country—all of us who care deeply and passionately about community harmony, consensus, building communities and giving honourable people a break and an opportunity to get on with their lives. Well done, Minister: you have managed to make this place even more unattractive than the Conservatives did, and I did not believe that would be possible for a minute.

The Government do not have the courage to bring their proposal to the House. They do not have the guts to bring it forward and ask us to support them, because they know what will happen: all the Labour MPs who oppose this will be there to voice that opposition, call them out and join us in standing up for some of the most wretched souls who inhabit this country. That is why they will not bring anything to the House.

The Home Secretary did not even have the courtesy to come to the House and make a proper statement. She was forced to answer an urgent question from the Conservatives, who actually told her that she did not go far enough, but she did not have the courtesy to come to the House to announce the reforms. She was in Denmark, in the British embassy in Copenhagen. She is asking us to emulate what is happening in Denmark—a country that could not be more different from the United Kingdom in terms of our historical roles in the world.

Denmark’s approach has not produced anything resembling a humane, fair or effective asylum system. It has not defeated the rise of the far right. Denmark has what it calls “parallel societies”, a sinister development that seems like some sort of weird ghetto law. Denmark has seen growing calls from its far right for remigration—that is where the debate is going there—and it has some of the worst structural discrimination in any welfare system in Europe. “Let’s copy Denmark,” they say. Well done on that one!

I remind the Minister, because he is such a fan of Denmark, that the Social Democratic alliance that introduced those measures was facing political annihilation until Trump ensured political and national unity with all his Greenland ambitions. But even so, many social democrats and progressives have abandoned those parties and are looking to the Greens and other progressive parties in Denmark. Maybe that is the real lesson from Denmark: look at what is happening to core Social Democrat support.

The truth is that the Government will not bring the reforms to the House because they know what will happen if they do. More than 100 Labour MPs have written to the Home Secretary to say that they have deep concerns about what is proposed. I hope that if they are given the chance to vote, many of them will join us in beating the proposals.

The question that always gets me in this particular Parliament is: why are the Government doing this? What is motivating them to take such an approach to immigration and asylum, and why do it now? The conventional view from the Government, and what we continue to hear from various Ministers and the Home Secretary, is that if they are not seen to be hard on asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants, their votes will go to Reform—that Reform will continue to grow unless Labour is seen to be as hard as Reform when it comes to these issues. But there is absolutely no evidence that Labour supporters are moving towards Reform. There is loads of evidence that Labour voters are moving towards the Greens; we have seen that in a couple of—

[Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

That’s not true!

[Pete Wishart]

Does the hon. Lady want to intervene? Sorry; I thought she was making weird gestures at me, but obviously she is just looking at her phone. That is what is actually happening.

As I have said to the Government at every opportunity —and I will say it again and again—they cannot beat Reform by emulating them. Reform can be beaten by challenging its agenda and dismantling its toxic ambitions. Reform cannot be beaten by marching on to its territory and fighting on its ground. All that does is legitimise its arguments and embolden its ambition.

You would think, Mr Stringer, that after their absolute hammering at the by-election a couple of weeks ago by my colleagues in the Green party, the Government might just think, “Is this working for us? Is there a problem with the way we are positioning ourselves on the spectrum of UK politics?” They might have taken a cursory glance at what happened in Caerphilly, where my colleagues from Plaid Cymru hammered the Government and stood strong against Reform, and were rewarded by a stunning by-election victory.

The Government’s strategy seems to be going on to Reform’s territory and trying to beat them. I say ever so gently to the Minister: regardless of how hard he tries—and he seems to be trying his utmost and damnedest—he will never out-Reform Reform, which is possibly to his credit. Reform are the absolute masters of sinister, poisonous right-wing ideology and, regardless of how hard the Government try, they will never beat Reform on that territory.

The Government are chasing Reform down that road but not noticing something profound that is happening in British politics. In Scotland, we have a particularly sharp divide in our politics, based around the constitution, and a divide seems to be opening up in English politics. Let us look at who came first and second in the by-elections. On one side, it is the parties of the progressive ideals of unity, consensus and wanting a compassionate immigration system. On the other side stand the parties of the right—the authoritarians and those who believe immigration is a bad thing that has to be controlled and defeated.

Labour is absolutely nowhere. It is fourth in the polls this morning. When is Labour going to have an opportunity to look at where it is? The dividing line is opening up, and Labour Members are all on the wrong side of it. Labour is seen to be part of a right-wing coalition; we hear that every time some right-wing Conservative or senior Member praises the Home Secretary to the rafters, and there is even praise from Reform. I am sure we will get more praise for the Home Secretary from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds). I hope he will indulge the House and tell us how wonderful he thinks these things are, because I know that privately he thinks what the Home Secretary is doing is brilliant. That is where Labour is now.

We have a march and rally next Saturday, organised by the Together Alliance. We are all going to be there. We are going to stand up, proudly and defiantly, to the far right. We have a little group in Westminster—the parliamentary forum to take on the far right. Members should come and join us, because that is where the action is in this country now, and where it is increasingly going. Labour Members are going to have to get on the right side or they are going to be finished.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)]

On the question of being on the right side, I say to the hon. Member that the Manchester Refugee Support Network, through its specialist services, helped almost 3,000 people last year to find stability, security and belonging in our community. It requires £60,000 per year to operate, but its funding runs out in August 2026. Does the hon. Member agree that such organisations must be provided with long-term, sustainable funding to support our most vulnerable constituents?

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. We cannot praise those organisations enough, because they are working in Labour’s hostile environment, where everything has been made harder for them to operate, so of course they should be supported. I am shocked to hear of the difficulties that organisation is having; I am sure that, with the hon. Member’s support, it will be able to address them and turn it around.

We are at an important juncture in UK politics, one that we have never seen or experienced before. A new dividing line is emerging. It looks like the conventional parties of the old times cannot meet and respond to this new agenda, and we are seeing something dramatic and profound happening in our politics.

I used to work with Labour Members when they were in opposition. They were the easiest and greatest people to work with—high values and high ideals. What has happened to them? They had better find their mojo. They had better regain their true intentions and find their values, or it could be a long, hard race to the bottom. I say to them, “It’s up to you now.” They can continue with the decline, or they can come and join us, and ensure that proposals like this are defeated.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. Members who wish to speak should bob. I have taken a rough count of those who have, and we will start with a four-minute limit, which I might have to reduce later.

14:50

[Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. My appreciation goes to the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) for securing this debate. He has been consistent in defending human rights in his decades of service to this place, and he has my respect for that.

When the country elects a Labour Government, it does so with certain ideas in mind: to lift people out of poverty, to improve public services, to offer genuine left-wing solutions for the problems the country is facing, and to show compassion to the most vulnerable people, both domestically and from across the world. That is why I vote Labour, and one of the main reasons why I joined the party.

No one ever votes Labour with the desire to be tough on the weak and weak on the tough. But with its immigration reforms, the Home Office is being tough on the very weakest—the most oppressed people. The reforms do not represent the values of the Labour party that I joined, and that I am still proud of. We should always stand up for oppressed people at home and all over the world. That really should be a given.

The feeling of perpetual review and assessment will cause no end of uncertainty. The change from five years to 30 months will negatively impact people’s ability to integrate and contribute to Britain. What a barrier to building a new life for people who have fled war, oppression and persecution—the sort of traumas that, personally, I cannot comprehend. This is most certainly not the route to making the country a more caring and more tolerant place.

I honestly do not know why the current leadership seems to think there is mileage in copying the far-right ideals of Reform. Thinking that that is the route to gaining electoral success is incredibly misguided and in no small measure wrong. No one voted Labour thinking that we would make social media videos bragging about deporting some of the most vulnerable people in the world. It is beyond distasteful and it is dangerous, because this is a huge political and moral moment, not just for this Labour party but for this country.

We all see that the far right is making headway across Europe. Fascists are already in power in Italy. France looks likely to elect as President a known extremist with a racist past. With the Government’s cruel reforms, we are trying to appease and pander to the far right’s lack of humanity. If it came to a vote, I certainly would not vote for the reforms, and anyone who would needs to have a look at themselves, and ask themselves the serious question of what happened to their humanity.

14:53

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

There has been too much immigration into this country for too long, and that is certainly the view of the vast majority of the people I speak to in my constituency. I suspect it is a widespread view among law-abiding, patriotic Britons from all kinds of backgrounds.

Three myths have been perpetuated to sustain the level of immigration that we have endured. The first is that it is necessary for our economy—that we need labour. What migration has actually done is to displace investment in domestic skills, to perpetuate a labour-intensive economy at a time when we should have been automating and taking out labour demand, and to feed the greed of those employers who, rather than paying a decent wage for employees who understood their rights, were happy to take cheap labour. Those have been the effects of the arguments about the economy.

The second myth has been about multiculturalism: this curious notion that we can absorb all kinds of people into our country without a shared sense of belonging, a common sense of what being British is all about, and that these co-existing subcultures would somehow cohere. In fact, as Trevor Phillips, himself of course the child of migrants, argued long ago, we have ended up with the ghettoisation—his words, not mine—of large parts of our country, with co-existing subcultures, without the bonds that bind us together in the shared sense I have described.

The third myth is that migration would not have a detrimental effect on some of our public services. Just imagine the figures for a moment—I am speaking now of legal migration. Between April 2022 and March 2023, the number of people entering Britain was 944,000—944,000 people extra in a year—yet when we debate housing, transport infrastructure, the health service, the availability of dentists and GPs, we never consider the effect of population growth at that scale on the demand for all those services.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an extremely eloquent speech. Of course we understand that the more people come into our country, the more the pressures on our public services will be exacerbated. The numbers he cited are post Brexit, under his former Government. If I remember correctly—I apologise if I get this wrong—net migration before Brexit was around a quarter of million people, mostly skilled labour or for specific work. After Brexit, the Europeans had to return, and we ended up allowing thousands of people to work in our care sector, in our NHS and in service industries that had too many vacancies. How does he explain the policies of his Government, which led to net migration rising from a quarter of a million to 900,000-plus, and what would he do differently today?

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman is of course right. The blame for all this should not be laid exclusively in the hands of the Labour party or Labour Governments. Successive Governments have administered a regime that has been out of tune with the sentiments of the vast majority of the population, who know what I have said is true. For the hon. Gentleman is right to say, too, that those successive Governments have allowed unsustainable levels of net migration.

If we look at the history, however, we see it was once quite different. In 1967 net migration was minus 84,000, in 1987 it was just 2,000, and in 1997 it was 48,000. It is in my time in this House—although, I hasten to add, not at my behest—that migration has soared, and we have begun to accept that hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people can be added to our population without taking account of the fact that that brings additional pressure on public services. That is not to say that many of those people do not make a positive contribution to our country—of course they do, in all kinds of ways—but to ignore the facts in terms of, for example, the growth in demand for housing is a dereliction of duty of which politicians across the political spectrum are guilty.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

On the issue of population change, it would appear that in the past 25 years the population of the United Kingdom has increased by over 10 million, while our economy has been largely stagnant. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that most people agree that there is a distinct difference between those who come from around the world to contribute to our society, pay their taxes, help the NHS and work, and those who come illegally? That distinction is often lost in this debate.

[Sir John Hayes]

Illegal migration, of course, is of a different order. Illegal immigration is about breaching borders. A nation means very little unless it has territorial integrity. What is the purpose of a nation that has porous borders? Indeed, it barely deserves to be described as such. The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the way our borders have been breached, with impunity, over time.

Bear in mind that nine out of 10 of the people who arrive in dinghies are men, and 75% are under the age of 40. Let us be clear about who is coming, and for what purpose. Many are economic migrants and, frankly, given where they come from, if we came from those places, we might come, too, because we would see a better life here and want that life for our families. I do not criticise the individuals; I criticise a system that permits that level of illegal migration.

Legal migration matters because of its scale and its character. It has led to a change in our society at a pace that many people find it impossible to comprehend, still less to cope with, so it is time that the political establishment, populated as it is by the liberal bourgeoisie—

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Alex Norris)]

That’s me!

[Sir John Hayes]

Not the Minister, of course—I except him from that general description. It is time that the political establishment faced up to the fact that what they have perpetuated for too long is at odds with the intuition, experience and will of the British people. We need to cut migration of all kinds, and we need to cut it now, or they will dispense with us and elect people who will.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members of two things: first, interventions should be brief; and secondly, if you say “you”, you are referring to me.

15:01

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing the debate.

I have to say to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes): I do not know who he thinks is working in our NHS and in our care sector, providing the skills, or who he thinks the engineers are who are coming here and building our houses in order to support our economy, but we certainly need immigration to support our economy and public services, which have been so severely under-invested in over the past 14 years.

We know our world is challenged. It is stretched and stressed, as we have seen with climate change displacing communities and war springing from that. We are seeing floods and famine across our planet, and as a result people are moving so that they can experience some dignity in their life. Some people come to our shores because they want dignity, and I have to say to the Government that the dehumanisation of fellow citizens of our planet is a complete disgrace and it is not in my name, and it is not in the values of our party.

Our party was built on solidarity between communities. The responsibility of a Labour Government is to bring those communities together, as we always have in our tradition, through the trade unions and through our party, to ensure that we are investing in those communities and bringing fantastic integration, as we are seeing in York, where we recognise the dignity in one another and bring it to the fore. The Government seem to have lost their way, and as a result they are losing support. They have certainly lost their beating heart, which must be re-found.

The draconian policies that are coming out of the Home Office are deeply damaging to our party and our future, as well as to our country, and I plead with the Government to change course. We know that Reform is not interested in the agenda—Reform Members just want power and have not even turned up for this debate today, so why follow them? Why not put a different stake in the ground with a different tune, which talks of different values—the values that we hold deep, the values that we place in those people, including the care workers who are serving our parents’ generation to ensure that they have dignity in later life? I say to the Government: change course.

Change course, as well, on our universities. The policies that have been brought forward for our universities are forcing them into financial ruin. International students have choices, and they used to choose to come to British universities; they are now going overseas. I know from the two universities in my constituency the consequences of the policy. Remove the international student levy, which they should not be paying, and remove the NHS surcharge, which clinicians revile. Ensure that instead we give universities the opportunity to be more inclusive and to have more home students, which the policy clearly rails against.

We have heard about already in this debate the impact of leaving the EU on migration levels. We need to recognise the risk-sharing opportunities of working with our European colleagues in a much more cohesive and comprehensive way. We used to be under the Dublin agreement, and we knew the rules. Since leaving the EU, we have not been part of that expression and working together with other countries. We cannot do this on our own, and we have seen the consequences of that. As imperfect as the asylum and migration management regulations are, at least they put risk-sharing at the heart of the agenda. We should be part of that too.

15:05

[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing this important debate.

Right across my constituency, through the highlands and islands, across Aberdeenshire and right across Scotland, successive Governments continue to fail our communities, our public services and our businesses with immigration policy that bears no scrutiny when it comes to labour requirements. Many Members have talked about the hardships faced by refugees and the impact on their lives, and the humanity or otherwise of our actions. I agree with those sentiments, but I am going to focus on the big impact on employment, and how that impacts the communities in my constituency.

Every day in Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey, there are people with care needs that cannot be fully met and businesses that cannot be staffed, not because of lack of budget, but because of lack of labour. “But,” say some, “there are people in the UK who can do these jobs,” but are there, really? In areas like my constituency, much of which is a two-and-a-half-hour drive north of Perth, which itself is an hour north of Edinburgh and five hours north of London—we are talking about somewhere that is 11-plus hours from here—are we really going to drag people away from their families and friends to do these jobs, when there has been and there could be a willing workforce to do them, contribute to our communities and be part of a constructive, progressive and successful whole? People do come by choice and love the places they move to, but their number does not come close to closing the gap between labour demand and labour availability.

The fact is that before Brexit there was far more labour available to care and hospitality. Sadly, that has disappeared in broken Brexit Britain. Care providers that do have foreign workers under excessively strict working visa rules are often left with the utterly invidious choice of not fulfilling care needs of vulnerable clients, or breaking visa rules on hours worked in order to do so. They are then punished severely simply for the act of caring, which is a disturbingly dystopian situation. Business leaders across Scotland, in Federation of Small Businesses branches and chambers of commerce, point to labour shortages and the stalling of economic growth as a result of current immigration policy.

[Apsana Begum]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government need urgently—today—to provide clarity on those constituents, perhaps of his and certainly of mine, who came through the European Community association agreement route and have had applications for renewals and other elements paused since November 2025? They are now in complete limbo, although they are eligible as of this month to apply for indefinite leave to remain.

[Graham Leadbitter]

Absolutely. That is just another example of delays in a system that does not work—a system that is not able to process applications or to deal with the legitimate issues that are raised by people within it in a timely and reasonable way. These are people who could be doing jobs, paying taxes and contributing to society, but have restrictions placed on what they can do and how they can live their lives.

Scottish Labour says it supports a more bespoke immigration system for Scotland, which would be great if its own Ministers paid any attention to it. The oppressive and stifling immigration rules that were imposed by the previous Conservative Government and are now being copper clad by, of all people, a Labour Government, are deeply damaging to the highlands, Moray and far beyond. Will the Government take responsibility for the harms that they are inflicting on vulnerable citizens whose care needs cannot be met from our current working population, and on those in the hard-pressed hospitality sector who cannot provide the service they wish or grow their businesses to meet demand due to an immigration policy that utterly fails them?

15:10

[Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer.

People in my constituency and, I think, right across the country are clear: they want an immigration system that is fair, but one that is controlled and works in the national interest. That is exactly what this Labour Government, led by the Home Secretary, intend to deliver.

[Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the point of fairness, constituents in Derby tell me that they are working hard to make a living and put their kids through school, but they are worried by retrospective changes to ILR. Does my hon. Friend agree that, to make the system completely fair, changes to ILR should not be retrospective?

[Steve Yemm]

I have met many people living in my constituency—workers from west Africa and from Asia—who make that case to me. I have written to the Home Secretary to support that case, and I hope the Government will look at the results of the consultation and think carefully about transitional arrangements for people who have been in the UK, working quite properly, for some time.

At the same time, as the Home Secretary has set out, it is important to recognise that the Government are restoring both control over the system and compassion. It is important not to choose one over the other, but to deliver both together. As a Government, we are taking decisive action to stop abuse of the system, and we will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds as a result. It is important to recognise that we are introducing a system where refugee status is not automatically permanent, but—

[Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the measures are so sweeping that it is not just asylum seekers who are caught by them, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) mentioned, those who arrived under the ECAA route, also known as the Ankara agreement? They came to this country and set up businesses, they pay taxes, contribute to the country and have set up their lives here, and now, at just the time that they were about to apply for ILR, they are caught by these measures. Does he agree that transitional protections need to be announced as a matter of urgency?

[Steve Yemm]

It is important to recognise that position, and it is important that transitional arrangements are put in place for people who entered the country absolutely legally. Crucially, I hope my hon. Friend will also recognise that we are shifting the system away from dangerous and illegal routes, towards safe and legal pathways, because no one should be risking their lives in the hands of criminal gangs.

This is what good government looks like. It is about restoring trust in the system, it is about fairness, and it is about delivering for constituents like mine in Mansfield, who expect a system that is fair, controlled and in the national interest. This Labour Government are getting a grip, and I am proud to support them.

15:14

[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing this important debate. Immigration is one of the defining issues of contemporary politics. Polls regularly show that it is one of the most important issues for the public. Much like my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), I am told by my constituents that they are fed up with a system that seems to work for absolutely nobody. I send surveys to villages on a monthly basis, and regularly more than 80% of those who return the surveys tell me that this issue is important to them and we need to fix the immigration system.

The Government’s attempts to reform the system are welcome. I encourage them to be ambitious. This is not about chasing Reform, as has been suggested by Members today; it is about focusing on an issue that matters deeply, certainly to my constituents. Earlier this month, I published a short report, “Backdoors to Britain”, which sets out 30 recommendations for strengthening our legal migration system. It comes after months of work and hundreds of written questions to the Home Office—I must apologise for pestering Home Office Ministers with them—which uncovered some alarming truths.

Nearly 17,000 micro-companies with five or fewer employees are eligible to sponsor visas, but there seems to be no data on how many people they have sponsored. There is a clear commercial incentive for our universities to undercut our legal migration system in exercising their power to conduct their own English language testing at the start of study. Completion of a degree, regardless of what it is in or where the individual has come from, itself acts as proof of English language competency for future applications to the Home Office.

Thousands of visa holders come through hard-to-enforce routes with minimal financial requirements. Two examples that I focused on in the report are religious and charity visa routes. We are operating a system where it is easier for someone to bring their non-British spouse to the UK if they are an immigrant than if they are a British citizen. I do not think that is fair to hard-working British citizens who want to bring their non-British spouse to the UK.

[Sir John Hayes]

I should have congratulated the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing the debate and said how pleased I am that you are in the Chair, Mr Stringer.

My hon. Friend will know that the care visa system established by the previous Government brought here more dependants than care workers. Everyone who arrives in a country brings an economic value and an economic cost; they all want houses, they all want health and they all want education for their children. That was a flagrant example of what my hon. Friend described: more dependants came, and the cost was much greater than the value.

[Blake Stephenson]

I could not agree more. That is clearly a back door to Britain, and we need to close it.

Our public sector is dependent on a huge number of worker visas, while we debate—even today, in the Chamber —record youth unemployment. As my right hon. Friend said earlier, we need to get those young people into work rather than relying on importing labour.

Perhaps more worrying are the huge gaps in fairly basic compliance data that I uncovered through my questions to the Home Office. Responses to many of my questions indicate that there is a lack of robust data in the Home Office, or that data might be available but producing an answer is simply too expensive. In either case, without robust and easily accessible data in the Home Office, I and my constituents are concerned that our legal migration system is effectively unenforceable.

Britain’s immigration system is not working for the British people. It is time that changed. As we continue to shape a new immigration system over the coming months and years, I hope the Minister will consider the recommendations in my report, which I have shared with Members and might well be in his inbox. I am more than happy to meet him to go through the recommendations if that would be of any use to the Government. My constituents want this Government—any Government, in fact—to end the loopholes, close the back doors to Britain and build an immigration system that works for British citizens.

15:19

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing a very timely debate. In fact, it took only hours after the Home Secretary’s announcement on settlement rights for messages from worried constituents in Poole to start flooding in. One of them, my constituent Olebanjo, put it very powerfully. He said:

“Migrants are not just statistics; we are carers, professionals, volunteers, and parents raising children who already call this country home. We want to belong, to integrate fully, and to continue giving our best to the UK. This proposal would make that harder, not easier.”

I think he is right. The idea that making life harder for people who are already here, working, raising families and contributing somehow improves assimilation or cohesion simply does not make sense at all.

The Government have described settlement as a privilege to be earned, but that ignores the valuable contribution that those workers have already made to our country, the economy and their local communities. In Poole and across the country, our health service relies on thousands of workers from around the world. In social care, the changes risk turning a staffing crisis into a catastrophe. We cannot tackle that problem by punishing the migrant workers caring for our relatives and providing dignity and warmth to our elderly.

The problem, then, is that migrant workers are being made to pay for issues that they did not cause. The outcome will be, I fear, depressingly predictable. When care homes, particularly those outside big cities, struggle to fill vacancies and care worsens as a result, right-wing politicians and their media outriders will not admit that punishing migrant workers has failed; they will double down and the clamour for harsher measures will grow. Our Labour Government must challenge that approach.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Care workers make an invaluable contribution to our country and the people that they care for. Does the hon. Member agree that illegal care companies that are charging to issue visas to people who then come to this country with no job are—along with those people arriving illegally—demonising the legitimate care workers without whom this country would not function?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

I led a debate in this Chamber some months ago on the need for a certificate of common sponsorship, which would make sure that individuals coming over to this country and working in the care sector were not tied to a single employer and could move between employers, giving them the power rather than the employer. I hope that the Government will look very seriously at that point.

It is wrong fundamentally to pull the rug out from people and change the rules halfway through the process. What message does it send about the kind of country we are if our laws and promises hold no meaning and if the British Government can make a deal with someone on a Monday, but by Wednesday, we could have changed our mind? That is part of why these policies have provoked such a reaction: they run against our values. British people believe—and Members across the Chamber have said today—that if a person works hard and plays by the rules, the Government should tread lightly on their life. What someone gets out should be what they put in.

Labour must be clear-eyed about where the real value in our economy lies. It is not with the billionaires and bankers, but with the workers—wherever they come from—who keep this country running every day.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I am going to reduce the time for speeches to three minutes.

15:24

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer.

Too often when immigration is spoken about in public discourse, whether in the media, online platforms, or indeed in this House, the tone becomes detached from reality and at times from a basic sense of humanity. I do not know anybody who supports or condones illegal entry into our country, or exploitation of our compassionate rules to take advantage and usurp other people’s rights. However, we must reject the false binary that elites seeking to divide us are all too willing to present: that we have to choose between compassion and prosperity. That is simply not true.

I want to present a real-world example of what a compassionate and beneficial immigration policy might look like: in January 2026, Spain’s left-wing Government issued a royal decree to create a pathway for around 500,000 undocumented migrants to obtain legal residency. To be eligible, migrants were required to have lived in Spain for at least five months—not 30 months, not five years, not 20 years—before application. Eligible individuals could apply for a one-year renewable residence permit, or a five-year permit for children. Permits allow people to work in any sector in any region of Spain.

Why is Spain doing this? To address labour shortages and support economic growth. Spain has argued that undocumented migrants are already contributing to the economy but cannot work legally. The Government say that migration has accounted for 80% of Spain’s economic growth in the past six years. Spain has an ageing population and labour shortages in key sectors, making additional legal workers essential. The reform aims to strengthen the formal labour market and increase tax and social security contributions. The Government also argue that the policy will promote social cohesion and rights integration. It is a model based on human rights, focusing on dignity, inclusion and co-existence. Spain needs an estimated 2.4 million additional workers in the next decade to maintain productivity.

[Blake Stephenson]

I thought I would intervene to give the hon. Gentleman a little more time. Is he arguing for an amnesty here in the UK? What does he think British citizens would think of such an amnesty? Does he believe that that would be fair or unfair?

[Iqbal Mohamed]

The reasons why Spain introduced the policy also apply to our country. Whether we address the challenges that both Spain and the UK have in the same way or differently is a question for the House. It is for the Government to make proposals and for the House to contribute to a fair, compassionate, productive and ethical policy. We do not want mass illegal or uncontrolled migration without benefits to our nation.

Spain requires 2.4 million workers in the next 10 years to maintain productivity and to support the pensions system. My question to the Government is, what estimate have they made of how many new workers will be needed in the UK over the next 10 years to maintain productivity and to deliver the Government’s mission for growth, and how will that requirement be fulfilled?

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I am going to have to reduce the time limit to two minutes. That speech lasted longer than I expected.

15:28

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) for leading this debate. My Government came to power promising a fairer Britain, so I have to ask plainly, who exactly are all these immigration proposals for? They are not designed for the people I represent, who help to keep this country running.

I want to start with the thousands of children and young people who have grown up in the UK and who are being pushed to the margins of the immigration system. They are being made to pay child citizenship fees of £1,214 to register as a British citizen. The Home Office’s own figures show that it makes a profit of £840 on each application. The fee is not an administrative cost; it is a revenue-raising exercise targeted at children, and it results in tens of thousands of children who have a legal right to British citizenship being priced out of it. They do not discover the consequences of that until later in life. Members may be wondering why I am still talking about this issue, given that the Government made a commitment in the House to reduce the financial burden on families and to address the issue specifically, but in all the proposals, I have not heard anything about it, and the fee remains the highest in Europe.

The Government are also proposing to double the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain. The idea that we would apply it retrospectively undermines the foundation of trust on which people make decisions when they come to work in the UK. They put down roots based on the rules that they are given when they apply. Those families are attempting to live and work in this country based on the promises that were made. We will drag people into an endless cycle of visa applications and unpredictable fees, sitting alongside an asylum and accommodation system where private providers make millions from Government contracts despite repeated reports of mismanagement, abuse and dangerous conditions. In turn, we turn around and blame those who are the most vulnerable—those seeking asylum—and change their conditions.

[Apsana Begum]

On danger and protections, does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must maintain the existing protections for survivors of domestic violence who have fled persecution and violence abroad, including the migrant victims of domestic abuse concession and the domestic violence ILR protection?

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. How far have we fallen if we renege on those commitments that we have made, particularly those under the refugee convention? Removing such status or forcibly removing people who have lived here lawfully for a number of years would be in direct contravention of our values as a country.

The Government cannot claim to support integration while pricing children out of citizenship. They cannot talk about fairness while extending the ILR pathway. They cannot promise compassion while allowing profiteering in the immigration system, while reneging on commitments and demonising asylum seekers. We need to build an immigration system that reflects not just our economic priorities, but our values as a country. These reforms do neither.

15:31

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing this vital debate. I am well-known for believing in immigration for those who need it, those who have a desire to assimilate and those who wish to make a new life for their families and become part of the fabric of British life. I believe in asylum for the few who are persecuted for their faith. They should be given an opportunity to apply for immigration status and to work and raise their families.

I think of those who come to the Ulster hospital, the Royal Victoria hospital and the Belfast City hospital—those who have emigrated here, pay their national insurance and their tax here and keep the A&Es in all those hospitals going. That is really important. But I do not believe in an unrestricted flow of immigration for those who jump in a plastic or rubber boat in Calais and come across—economic migrants who are fit and well.

In the very short time I have, I want to make a point about the fishing fleet, which faces what I believe is unnecessary immigration reform. The new English language thresholds being introduced in 2026 create a huge barrier to bringing new crew into the industry from overseas. The phasing-out of the temporary shortage list for the end of 2026 means that we will no longer be able to bring in foreign crew to Northern Ireland to work on fishing vessels and will only be able to renew the visas of those who already work here. That means that in 12 months we stand to lose 70% of our workers, which will tie up close to 100% of our fleet.

I ask the Minister, who is a decent person and always replies very positively: can we have a meeting to discuss the bespoke visa system for fishing roles in the short and medium term? We need a mechanism to ensure that the industry does not fall during that period, while we do the necessary work to achieve more domestic recruitment. I ask the Minister to ensure that we have that meeting to prevent the implosion of the fishing industry due to the pressure on crews and vessels. Immigration is the lifeblood of our nation, but it must be controlled and in the national interest. We need to find that balance and find it soon—indeed, we need to find it before it is too late.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. The flurry of interventions that we have had over the last three speeches has meant that we have gone two or three minutes over time. I will reduce the time available to the spokespeople for the three parties by a minute each, and ask each of them to take nine minutes.

15:33

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer.

I thank the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) for securing the debate. He and I served together on the Committee that considered the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, where we proposed amendments to lift the ban on refugees working, and to provide for humanitarian visas to introduce safe and legal routes. I am pleased to work in partnership with him again to support our vulnerable refugees.

I want to start with what the Law Society says about the Government’s proposals:

“The Home Secretary’s proposals to increase the time for migrants to be eligible for settlement from five to ten years lack clarity, risks unfairness and may undermine rule-of-law principles.

The changes must not be applied retrospectively to those already in the UK in a way that would disadvantage them. To do so would run counter to the rule of law, undermine business planning and reduce flexibility and movement in the labour market.

The proposed changes are impacting businesses now, with our member law firms reporting that international hires are declining job offers. This is due to the uncertainty over their plans to build a life in the UK for them and their family. Our members who practice immigration law are left unable to advise clients with any certainty.

These changes risk the UK’s reputation as a centre for global talent and undermine business’s ability to recruit the best people for the job. In an increasingly competitive global services market, it is imperative that the UK can stay ahead and be an attractive destination for talent.”

I would welcome the Minister’s response to the Law Society’s damning assessment of the Government’s immigration reforms.

I will admit that this Government have inherited an absolute mess and a chaotic asylum and immigration system from the Conservatives, who deliberately did not process asylum applications in order to put people off coming to this country. That was a failure both for taxpayers and for putting immigrants off coming here. It means that we spend £6 million a day on asylum hotels.

However, another party is responsible for this mess: Reform. Last week, when we debated immigration, Reform MPs were not here; today, when we are debating immigration, they are not here. Brexit boats now cross the channel, resulting in deaths. Reform’s pursuit of Brexit has resulted in that, yet its MPs are absent from the debate. They need to be held to account for what they have done. The Dublin regulation has already been mentioned: we used not to have these channel crossings, and we used to be able to solve this problem by working with European partners, and it is vital that we get back to that situation.

There are huge benefits to immigration, which some colleagues have talked about, but some have tried to undermine this afternoon. Immigrants are statistically more likely to be employed in the health and social care, hospitality and agriculture sectors. Foreign-born individuals are more likely to be in work than UK-born citizens. Those remarks are not from a “woke” institution, but from the House of Commons Library. Immigrants make this country better financially and culturally, and we need to stand up for the benefits that immigration brings.

I will highlight agriculture. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) warned that the Home Office’s decision to end visas for around 75 specialist overseas sheep shearers risks up to 1.5 million sheep going unshorn, creating both an animal welfare problem and a food shortage. The Home Office had no answer to that warning by my right hon. Friend, as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I hope the Minister will be able to respond to it this afternoon—or if not, take it away. It is a crisis of the Government’s own making, and it needs to be corrected.

I will take in turn some of the particular issues that the Government are introducing. ILR should not be retrospective, and I would welcome the Minister’s views on what assessment the Government have made of the legal challenges if it were made retrospective. I am pleased that the Government have done yet another U-turn and agreed to lift the ban on asylum seekers and refugees working—but, despite the fact they are so in love with the rules of Denmark, they have made the rule one year rather than six months. Why have they not followed Denmark?

I also want to talk about the Government’s proposal to review refugee status for every refugee, every two and a half years, for 20 years. The Government do not seem to be able to make a decision on applicants and then cope with the appeals, yet they are adding more work for themselves. Can the Minister give me a cast-iron guarantee that the Home Office can cope?

I want to briefly mention student visas. In Afghanistan, women and girls have been persecuted just because of their gender. Last year, the Home Office closed safe and legal routes for Afghan women, and this month it closed them for women studying. What does the Minister, who I know has a heart and soul, say to that?

Finally, I was last in this Chamber to talk about homeless people, and I want to mention homeless refugees, and particularly their families. The Government have changed the rules on move-on rights, and that has had a profound impact. There have been exemptions for pregnant women and disabled and elderly people; will the Minister agree to ensure that the move-on rate is changed to exempt families with children?

15:40

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I host a researcher from an asylum charity in my office. I am sure that the Minister is glad to have a friendly face in this debate, so it is particular pleasure to speak and to congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing it. I agree entirely with what he said about the timeliness of the debate. It has been a very broad-ranging one, so I will make a few observations on the debate and then finish with some questions, which I hope the Minister might address.

It is clear that there is a degree of commonality between the official Opposition and the Government on many of the measures that are being brought forward. As the Leader of the Opposition said very clearly, the Government will have our support in implementing them, should they run into any difficulties in that respect. However, it is also clear that many of the challenges around asylum and migration, like many of the challenges that face our Government and our country more generally, are getting worse. The situation is deteriorating.

My own entry into this area of work came because, as a local councillor, I saw the consequences for communities of the arrival of very large numbers of asylum seekers. Indeed, to this day, the Hillingdon part of my constituency has the highest per capita level of asylum seekers of any local authority area in the country, with more than 100 different first languages. Diversity and dealing with these issues at a local level are things with which my constituents and I are extremely familiar.

Over those years, we have had many debates—I will touch on this in my questions to the Minister—about how we ensure a fair and appropriate dispersal of asylum seekers across the country. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire is now hosting some asylum seekers dispersed into his constituency—but for many decades local authorities in Scotland, for example, demanded a more liberal approach to our borders in respect of asylum seekers, while absolutely refusing to be dispersal areas for those people when they were here. While the 31 mostly Conservative authorities in south-east England volunteered to become asylum dispersal areas, the plea fell on deaf ears north of the border.

It is clear that no party has a monopoly on practical compassion when it comes to support for those who seek refuge in our country. Indeed, we can thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), now the shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, for the actions that he took during his time as our Home Secretary, which produced the significant fall in net migration into this country, which this Government have seen as a benefit.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) outlined in reference to his report, there remain significant concerns about putting the appropriate package of measures in place to ensure that our borders are robustly and consistently controlled. We need to make sure that these debates are happening. One thing that is very clear—I expect that most of us, as politicians, will have heard this while canvassing—is that voters tend to be very positive about all the migrants they personally know. They like the ones who run the local shop, who work in the GP practice, who drive the bus or who are their next-door neighbours. It is all the others they are worried about. There is therefore a big job of work about demystification.

When we as Conservatives, in the previous Government, decided to open the door to large numbers of refugees from Hong Kong—people who were traditionally associated with our country and had a right to be here under that scheme—it gained very widespread public acceptance. The same was true of the Ukraine refugee scheme. We need to make sure that we have tough measures in place around illegal migration and an appropriate and compassionate response to those in need.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Going back to back-door migration, does the hon. Member agree that the comments made by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) were about issues under his Government that were inherited by this Labour Government, not created by them? Can the hon. Member explain why the previous Government allowed those back-door routes to exist and why they did not take action to stop them when they were in power?

[David Simmonds]

The hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) spoke about the absence of Members from certain parties from this Chamber. Those colleagues who we saw scuttling off to Reform have serious questions to answer about why, when given free rein in the Home Office, they failed to implement even the measures that this Labour Government have brought forward to address some of the loopholes that the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) highlighted.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) described some of the characteristics of illegal migration. I have been to Calais and I have seen the drone footage gathered by the French police of the boats on the beaches and the camps set up by the traffickers who are bringing people over, and it is clear that we should be robust and extremely cautious. I have watched footage of people in those boats who, seeing the police approach, pick up children and throw them in the sea, knowing that the police will have to rescue them rather than stop the migrant boat. We should make no apology for taking robust action to address those concerns.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern—I think he probably does—that on many occasions, the French police seem to sit back and do nothing, and let the whole process go ahead? That poses the question whether this Labour Government’s agreement with the French Government means anything at all.

[David Simmonds]

I do not entirely share that view. I have seen the challenges that the French police face, with something like 1,000 members of their constabulary covering 10,000 km of coastline. The traffickers will sometimes send 50 or 100 boats to sea simultaneously, knowing that there is no way that the French police can possibly deter them. Each of those boats is worth €70,000 to €80,000-worth of revenue to their criminal enterprise, so they have a big incentive.

The Minister is here in an honourable tradition of Labour Governments taking robust action on our borders. The first immigration controls that our country ever had were introduced by the post-war Labour Government in response to concerns about the exit from empire. No recourse to public funds, the first time that asylum seekers were taken out of the standard benefits system and eligibility for council housing, was introduced by the Blair Government. The asylum dispersal system was introduced by the now Mayor of Greater Manchester when he was the Immigration Minister in those years.

On the Conservative side of the Chamber, we are broadly supportive of the measures based on the Danish model that are being brought forward by the Home Secretary. We remain very concerned, however, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire have highlighted, that many of those measures will still fall short and that our constituents’ concerns will remain.

In the spirit of a constructive approach, may I ask the Minister whether he has given any further consideration to the idea of an asylum visa, going beyond the simple prospect of safe and legal routes? If people wish to study, work, come to get married or live in the United Kingdom for any other reason, they have to apply for a visa, but we do not have any such measures in place for asylum seekers, and that is helping to drive the illegal traffic across the channel.

What discussions is the Minister having across Government about avoiding cost shunts, which are an increasing concern and a consequence of speeding up asylum decision making—in particular, the rapid rise in the cost of temporary accommodation for local authorities as asylum seekers get status and turn up at the town hall seeking help or are left destitute in local communities? What consideration will the Minister give to using protocol 16 of the European convention on human rights, since it is clear that UK tribunals go well beyond the provisions of that protocol in many cases, to ensure that we are not doing more than we should be doing?

Even with all those questions, I can assure the Minister that as the official Opposition we will be providing support in the Lobbies to ensure that those measures are implemented, even if we remain of the view that they should go further.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

We have little time, Minister, so please try to leave a minute or two at the end of your speech for the winding-up speech.

15:49

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Alex Norris)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer; I shall certainly follow that direction. I start by thanking the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) for securing this debate, on a topic he clearly feels very passionate about. He spoke with great power, while also providing a forum for colleagues to do the same and raise interesting and important global, national, regional and local issues.

I will seek to cover the wide range of issues that have been raised in this debate, but I start by saying this, because I did not hear it enough in the hon. Gentleman’s contribution: the system at the moment is disorderly and uncontrolled. The people with the most agency in the system now are human traffickers. I appreciate the power and the anger with which he spoke, but I know that he has the same power and anger towards those individuals.

Personally, I would like to have heard more on that, because we know what the consequences are across the country. Public confidence on this issue is subterranean. The hon. Gentleman made a lot of points about politics, but actually this is much bigger than party politics. Public confidence in the mainstream to deliver meaningful change in this space is subterranean. This is the last go for the mainstream to do this. We know that public order, as a result, is in jeopardy. We must be really careful; I appeal to all hon. Members that there must be no progressive defence of the status quo—they would never hear that from the Government Front Bench. There is only the absolute need to act.

That is set against the instincts of the British people. I know from my own community, in which it is no secret that the immigration conversation is difficult, that those same people who raised those concerns with me about the disorder and lack of control are the same people who leant into the Afghan resettlement scheme, the Syrian scheme, the Hong Kong British national overseas scheme—for which we have one of the biggest populations in the country—and Homes for Ukraine, in which people are literally opening their homes. That showed that when there was control in the system and order, and when we knew those coming forward genuinely needed protection, the community would lean into it. That is an awful lot to build on.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the edges of the argument, but I say to him that the edges of the argument at the moment embody, on one side, a nightmarish vision of a Britain that closes its borders, puts up high walls and offers sanctuary to no one; and on the other, a fairytale that pretends that we can do it in all circumstances with all people. That is not right, and the public know it.

I will cover the points that the hon. Gentleman and other right hon. and hon. Members have made, but I do want to address some of the things the hon. Gentleman said in opening that are simply wrong, starting with the idea that the Home Secretary has changed refuge rules overnight from being permanent to temporary. That is not the case. It used to be a five-year grant of settlement; it is now a two-and-a-half-year one. I will explain shortly how that will work in practice, but that is not the change he described.

The hon. Gentleman also said that the Home Secretary will arbitrarily, at the stroke of a pen, overturn individuals’ protection needs. Again, that is not true. Everybody’s protection need will be individually assessed. I am a white, middle-aged, cisgendered, heterosexual man, but someone who looks like me—just as good looking, Mr Stringer—could be gay, and they would not be safe in certain contexts. That principle will always be the case under this Government, and it is an established principle in this democracy.

The hon. Gentleman talked about it making it impossible to find work. Again, that is not at all the intention, which I will cover when I talk about core protection. He talked about the contraction of safe and legal routes. I am proud that, through our asylum policy statement, this Government were willing to stand up when it was politically difficult to do so, and say that we want to break the model of the traffickers who transport people to this country illegally, while providing safe and legal routes.

I cannot accept, however, that time-limited university schemes designed for an individual to come for one, three or four years—an agreement made between that individual with the state and the university—should act as a de facto asylum system. That cannot be right, which is why we are replacing it. However, I heard a lot from the hon. Gentleman and other colleagues that I found heartening with regards to the desire to provide sanctuary, for everyone to have an opportunity to contribute to this country and for integration, because we share those desires, too.

I will now turn to some of the points on illegal migration. First, on core protection, the 30-month permission, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), is there because, if individuals come to this country and get refuge, but then sit at home without learning the language or contributing to society, we believe that is no life. It is not good for the individual or the collective. If they switch to the protected work and study route, which means they are either working or learning, and are learning the language, not committing crimes, and taking part in society, they can take themselves out of that 30-month renewal regime. It is exactly designed to give people the opportunity to contribute, which is what colleagues have wanted. I think that that is the right balance between the individual and the collective.

The issue of visa brakes was raised by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, and by the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) when he talked about “back doors”. It is a really important point. From the four countries for which we implemented visa brakes—Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan—asylum applications had risen to more than 470% of their 2021 level. In the case of Afghanistan, 93% of those students—all of whom said they had come to the country for a time-limited period—claimed asylum. If that, as the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire posits, demonstrates that there is a need for an asylum-linked study route, I agree, actually. He knows that the Home Secretary has already announced that we intend to bring that in. But this Parliament and this Government should be the ones to set the terms of that, rather than universities themselves. That must surely be the right balance.

The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster), talked about our commitment to people from Afghanistan. He knows that in the past few years, we have brought 35,000 people over via safe and legal means. Again, we will offer those protected visa routes, but that should be a decision for this country’s democracy, rather than a decision for universities.

My hon. Friend the Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Alloa and Grangemouth and for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) talked about values —something I think about a lot. First, the idea of an orderly system—one that takes the agency away from the traffickers, closes down illegal routes into the country and opens up safe and legal ones—sits squarely within the mainstream of Labour’s traditions. The idea that we incentivise by making the best route to settlement by working and contributing, being a good neighbour and not committing crime, is also rooted in the values of our movement. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) covered that point very well. I am proud that we are part of a Government who have been willing—even when it is politically difficult—to say that we intend to pivot the model in that way.

[Brian Leishman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Alex Norris]

Yes, but I have very little time.

[Brian Leishman]

I appreciate it, and I will be quick. I understand what my hon. Friend is saying, but could he clarify what he thinks, with regard to Labour values, about the horrendous social media posts that we have seen, showing people being bundled into the backs of vans?

[Alex Norris]

That is a very important point. If people are failed asylum seekers or foreign national offenders, and have no right to be in the country, they should be removed. There is a challenge: public confidence, as I have said, is so, so low. It must be demonstrated that that takes place—I have that conversation with constituents, and they do not always believe me. If my hon. Friend thinks that it is too route one, I accept that challenge, but I cannot accept that we do not need to tell that story, because we absolutely do.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) asked for a meeting about fishing; I will make sure that it happens with me or with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal (Mike Tapp). For sheep shearers, we have announced the one-year extension.

A number of colleagues raised settlement issues—I will not name them all—including my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), who is no longer in her place. We will retain existing safeguards around domestic violence and abuse. On earned settlement, again, it is about ensuring that people’s contributions are recognised, so that working and earning, learning the language and not committing crimes can accelerate a person’s route to settlement. That is why we brought it in.

On the point about retrospection, it has always been the case that the rules apply at the point of application, not at the point of entry. Nevertheless, colleagues know that we consulted—the consultation only recently closed, and it had 200,000 contributions. We are looking very carefully at it—transitional protection was an element of it, and we will return to it. The hon. Member for Woking asked me what I thought of what the Law Society has said about a lack of clarity. I defend the principle that we are consulting and thereby creating clarity. I think that that is the right balance.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) made interesting points about common sponsorship, and I am talking to the union movement about that. We are looking at it closely. I have covered a number of points that were made in what has been an interesting debate.

15:59

[Pete Wishart]

I wish I had more than a few seconds to sum up what has been an important and significant debate. There are a couple of things that I thought would happen: first, that most of his Back Benchers would be totally against what the Minister said, and secondly, that the Tories would totally agree with this Labour Government on all things immigration and asylum. Those are the friends that the Minister keeps. This is an important debate that is shaping the new dynamic in this country. Profound change is happening. The Minister is on the wrong side of this. Conservative Members are quite content to support this Labour Government. I urge the Minister: review where you are. It is not working. You will continue to get hammered in subsequent by-elections—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. We must move on to the next debate.

[Jim Shannon]

On a point of order, Mr Stringer. This is not a criticism of yourself, but when the list of speakers is presented to the Chair for consideration, I understood that the protocol and rules of the House were that if those on the list intervened, they would go to the bottom of the list, while those whose names were on the list but had not intervened would be brought to the top. Can you clarify that that is the rule? That is how I and others understand it, but today, that rule was not followed.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

It is guidance, as opposed to a rule. With the exception of yourself, I did put to the end of the list those people who had intervened.

[Jim Shannon]

I ask the Clerk to check that, because my understanding is that that did not happen.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. We must start the next debate.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).