Migration and Economic Development Partnership

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Jim Shannon.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

It does not mean that we are at the end of the statement. It just means that, in the circumstances, I am being kind to the hon. Member for Strangford.

[Jim Shannon]

I am sure the Secretary of State was saying, “Great, it is all over.” I jest, but it is not fair to do so, because it is a very serious matter.

Although I agree with the Secretary of State that there must be an end to boatloads of young refugees circumnavigating the system in place, the Court has determined that the risk of refoulement from Rwanda to other countries means that the Government’s policy cannot be carried out legally. Will the Secretary of State outline how she believes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can stop the influx while fulfilling our human rights obligations, which is not just a legal matter, but a moral one.

[Suella Braverman]

The hon. Gentleman is right: this is not just a legal matter; it is a moral one and it is of a political salience that I have not seen for a long time in our country. The vast majority of the British people want us to stop the boats. They want us to fix this problem. That is why I am encouraged with every step that we take on this journey. The reality is that we believe in the lawfulness of our agreement with Rwanda, and, as the Court found, the conditions in which people will be accommodated in Rwanda per se are lawful and they will be treated lawfully and humanely. It is about whether there is a risk of refoulement—of them being relocated on to a third country that may not be safe. That is the point of dispute in the judgment. We are seeking permission to appeal. We believe in the lawfulness of this scheme and we have confidence in delivering it as soon as possible.

Asylum Applicants: Mental Health and Wellbeing

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Bacon]

I do agree with the hon. Gentleman, and the point of my bringing this case to the House is to highlight the fact that Home Office officials simply are not approaching the issue with anything like sufficient urgency to sort it out. I reiterate the point I made earlier: I make no criticism of Ministers in this regard, because I do not doubt for one second that every Home Office Minister is straining every sinew to make this a reality. My criticism, such as it is, is aimed squarely at the officials, who do not seem to see these people as people; they see them as problems they will get to when they have time.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward an issue that is important to him, and congratulate him on being so assiduous. Does he not agree that our obligations—and, I believe, our moral duty—must mean that, as well as feeding and sheltering asylum seekers, we ensure they are supported to survive in this land, which is foreign to them, and are given help to assimilate, rather than being left voiceless and frightened in a hotel room with their children, wondering for weeks what is going to happen next?

[Gareth Bacon]

I have a lot of sympathy with that point. It is critical that we process asylum claims much more quickly because while those claims are in abeyance, the asylum seekers are living in stasis. It might be that people who come to claim asylum are not asylum seekers, but economic migrants. That does not make them bad people, but it does mean that they are illegal immigrants, and they should be returned. What should not happen, as in the case of my constituent, is that they live in a state of limbo for years. That should not be acceptable in any way, shape or form.

I became aware of Mr A’s case on 14 March 2022, when a constituent made contact to request that I engage with the Home Office. Back then, my constituent had already noted Mr A’s deteriorating mental health. However, despite my office’s regular efforts to obtain updates, it was not until August 2022—five months later—that the Home Office responded, and only to say that Mr A would have to wait a further six months for an update.

I am sure the House can imagine the effect that that message had on Mr A. Indeed, only a few days after receiving that news, he climbed up Tower Bridge with the intention of attempting to kill himself. Fortunately, he was talked down. He was taken to hospital and later returned to the accommodation with which he had been provided in Biggin Hill. Given the elevated risk of harm displayed by Mr A, my office contacted the Home Office to alert it, in the hope that a sense of urgency would be felt by those in charge of processing the case. However, several more months went by without a resolution of any kind.

In January, therefore, I met with Mr A and another of my constituents, who had been helping him. During our meeting, Mr A presented me with evidence for his asylum claim. That included X-ray images of his body. Disturbingly, the images showed a large amount of metal shrapnel lodged in his torso and limbs as a result of being shot at by the Syrian regime. The evidence also included photographs of him after he had been beaten with an iron bar. Faced with this disturbing evidence and having no success at all in persuading Home Office officials to progress Mr A’s case, my office informed officials that if no progress had been made in two weeks—that is, by 3 February—I would seek a meeting with the Home Secretary to personally brief her on the situation, place the entire file in her hands and ask her to intervene. I hoped that that might lift the all-pervading sense of disinterest and inertia.

No such luck: on 31 January, I received an email from Home Office officials that gave no additional information and no indication as to when a decision would be made, and that claimed to have sent a response to Mr A on 16 January. Neither Mr A nor my other constituent who attended the meeting with me on 20 January—four days after the Home Office letter was allegedly sent—had mentioned that letter. On 1 February, my office called the Home Office hotline to request a copy of it. The response we received was that the Home Office was unable to locate the letter, and the officials stated that it had not been uploaded to the system. When they asked my staff member if he would like to request that they find the letter and send it to him, and he said he would indeed like them to do that, he was told that that would be treated as a new query and it would be sent to my office within 20 working days. You could not make this stuff up.

Later that day, I informed my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey), who is a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Office, of my intention to seek a meeting with the Home Secretary. He chased my request diligently, and three weeks later, on the morning of 22 February, he informed me that he had made progress on securing the meeting and asked me for Mr A’s date of birth and case reference number, which I passed to him a short while later. At 6 pm, he informed me that he had secured a meeting with the Home Secretary in her office in the House, scheduled for 6.45 pm that evening.

When I turned up for the meeting, I was brusquely turned away by a Home Office special adviser called Jake Ryan, who refused to allow me in. When my hon. Friend told him that that was unacceptable, the special adviser swore in his face. The high-handed arrogance of this unelected political appointee was staggering. I gather that my hon. Friend escalated the situation to higher authorities because at last there was movement on Mr A’s case. When I finally attended a meeting with the Home Secretary on 1 March, she informed me that officials had determined Mr A’s case. He would be granted 30 months to remain in the country and his application for asylum was refused on account of him being a Chilean national. The House will recall that I had been informed that, while Mr A had a Chilean grandmother, he is not a Chilean national, has no living Chilean relatives and, indeed, has never visited Chile.

Giving Mr A limited leave to remain means that he cannot regularise his life here or bring his family. Furthermore, giving him limited leave to remain, after which he will presumably be returned to Syria or sent to Chile, which apparently has a returns arrangement with Syria, is terrible news for Mr A because it significantly increases the likelihood of him being returned to a country where there is a direct threat to his life. The fact that the special adviser refused to allow me to see the Home Secretary on 1 March is extraordinarily frustrating, because had he not done so, I would have been able to alert her to those facts and it is possible that a different outcome to Mr A’s case would have been achieved.

In the meeting on 1 March, I asked the Home Secretary for the case to be looked at again by officials, and she assured me that it would be. Two weeks later, on 15 March, I received formal notification from the Home Office of the decision it had taken. The relevant sections of the letter read:

“On 3rd November 2020, Mr A submitted a claim for asylum; I apologise for the delay in progressing this case and any distress this may have caused.”

For the avoidance of doubt, that letter was written in March 2023. The delay referred to amounted to two years and four months. The letter continued:

“Mr A had a series of significant safeguarding issues (suicide attempts); We take the mental health and wellbeing of asylum seekers very seriously. We discussed Mr A’s case with officials and there were a number of delays due to the sensitivities and complexities of the case.”

The claim that Home Office officials take these issues seriously is one that I treat with a great deal of scepticism, certainly in the context of this particular case. Again, for the avoidance of doubt, it was the disinterest and protracted institutional inertia of Home Office officials that caused the safeguarding issues that they referred to.

The letter then stated:

“Mr A’s application was fully considered and the asylum and Humanitarian Protection aspect of the claim has been refused as Mr A does not have any individual protection needs in Chile.

However, we will be granting Mr A a period of leave of 30 months on the basis of his private life as, given his vulnerabilities, there would be insurmountable obstacles to him establishing himself in Chile.”

So on the one hand the Home Office accepts that Mr A would be unable to establish himself in Chile, but on the other it is refusing him asylum here, thereby condemning him to suffer another two and a half years of the purgatory.

Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

No. As I have said on many occasions, the approach we are taking is to introduce one of the most creative and robust systems of any country in the western world.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I recognise that the Minister and the Government have a big illegal migration issue to sort out, but the economic impact assessment does not paint an accurate picture. Without foreign staff our NHS would collapse, and without the support of grandparents to help with children our workforce would collapse. The assessment does not do justice to the fact that we as a nation are infinitely richer thanks to those who choose to come here to work and raise their families, and who make the choice to be the best of British alongside those of us who were born here.

[Robert Jenrick]

The difference is that the people to whom the hon. Gentleman has referred come here legally. We welcome people who come here legally—as visitors on tourist visas, as workers on work visas, as NHS workers on NHS and social care visas—but it is very different if people break into our country, flagrantly breaching our laws. No other country in the world would tolerate that, and neither should we.

Population Growth: Impact of Immigration

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes]

That is entirely true. Indeed, there is a huge gulf between the expectations and the sentiments of the vast bulk of the British population on this subject and those of that awful marriage of greedy plutocrats and doubt-fuelled liberals, who seem to think that endless migration is acceptable. My hon. Friend is right: this has been done without consent—indeed, without as much as consultation, let alone consent.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman on bringing this forward. I understand the direction he is going in, but my understanding is that 1.2 million people migrated to the UK and 557,000 left to go elsewhere. That leaves a balance, as the right hon. Gentleman said, of 606,000 at the end of June ’22. Does the right hon. Member accept that many of the people who are coming here have a contribution to make to society and can build society alongside us? I understand that economic migrants are outside of this system, but there are many who want to make a contribution. Does he accept that fact, and does he think that the contributions they make to the NHS and to families are important?

[Sir John Hayes]

Yes, of course I accept that and I will say a bit more on that later on. Of course it is true that people come here and make remarkable contributions to our communities and to our society. This is not about a failure to acknowledge that contribution; it is about dealing with the unprecedented scale and pace of it. It is impossible to sustain this level of migration for reasons I will set out.

To be clear about the relationship to population, migration alone accounts for 57.5% of population growth in England and Wales. Since 2001, the UK population has increased by 8 million, of which nearly 7 million was due to immigration. Just imagine that figure for a moment. To put it in context, that equates to the combined populations of Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Peterborough, Ipswich, Norwich, Luton and Bradford. A much higher population increase can be expected in future years unless we do something radical to address this problem.

National Security Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 26th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that important point. The annual report lists a number of policy Departments. Although the Select Committees do incredibly important work, they are not able to see the same information because their members do not have the same clearance as members of the ISC. It is quite right that such information and such scrutiny fall to the ISC, which alone can do that important work.

We have previously discussed that one of the starkest revelations from that annual report is that the ISC has not been able to secure a meeting with a Prime Minister since December 2014, nearly nine years ago. I welcomed the Chair of the ISC’s intervention when we debated the merit of the previous amendment, saying that the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) had pledged to meet the ISC. However, given her exceptionally short tenure in office, we will never know if that meeting would have taken place—her name is No. 4 on the list of five Prime Ministers who have been in office since 2014.

Such a meeting is just one of the considerations for an updated MOU, but knowing how often this issue has come up, both in this House and in the other place, I wonder whether the current Prime Minister now has a date in the diary to meet the ISC. If we are to take Government amendment (a) at its word, arranging that meeting is the very least the Government could do to be able to point to some progress. Alas, it appears that they cannot point to that progress.

I am also interested to know whether the Government have spoken to the ISC about Government amendment (a). Given that the amendment seeks to assure us that the Government intend to do due diligence on engaging with the ISC, have they engaged the ISC about the amendment? Hopefully the Minister might be able to shed some light.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the shadow Minister for her thoughts. I suppose the rationale for opposing Lords amendment 122B is the Justice and Security Act 2013. Does she have any idea why the Government are reluctant to concede to a review as the legislation evolves? That seems to be a simple way of doing it.

[Holly Lynch]

It would be unwise to speculate at the Dispatch Box, but I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. In the absence of clarity, he is right to put that question to the Government. Why have we not seen progress on this? It would seem to be sensible and proportionate to expect that engagement happens between the Government and the Prime Minister and the Intelligence and Security Committee, and happens on a regular basis.

Lords amendment 22B, tabled by Lord Carlile—once again, let me thank him for his services to this legislation—has continued to enjoy broad support, both across the Benches inside Parliament and outside. We know, from examples that have been exposed and from the most recent annual threat assessment by the director general of MI5, Ken McCallum, that it deals with one of the ways hostile state actors and their proxies are seeking to gain influence within our democracy. When we debated the merit of the previous amendment on this matter, I shared the examples of those linked to so-called Chinese secret police stations who had been involved in organising Conservative fundraising dinners. I also cited the Good Law Project’s research, which claims that the Conservatives have accepted at least £243,000 from Russian-associated donors, some of whom were linked to sanctioned businesses and organisations, since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

There is a comprehensive case for these proportionate changes. The Electoral Commission has said:

“Enhanced due diligence and risk assessment processes would help campaigners identify foreign money, identify potential proceeds of crime, and establish a culture of ‘know your donor’ within parties—similar to the ‘know your customer’ approach, encouraged through Anti-Money Laundering regulations for the financial sector.”

I hope the Minister is persuaded by its argument that:

“These requirements could be introduced in a way that recognises the need for proportionality, with different requirements depending on the size of a regulated entity’s financial infrastructure, or the size of a donation, to prevent the checks becoming a disproportionate burden on smaller parties and campaigners.”

Similarly, Spotlight on Corruption has argued:

“The rules that are supposed to prohibit foreign donations are riddled with loopholes which enable foreign money to be channelled to political parties and MPs through lawful donors.”

That point has just been made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). Furthermore, the Committee on Standards of Public Life, in its 2021 “Regulating Election Finance” report, recommended that laws should be updated and that

“parties and non-party campaigners should have appropriate procedures in place to determine the true source of donations. Parties and campaigners should develop a risk-based policy for managing donations, proportionate to the levels of risk to which they are exposed”.

We know that the risk is there, and Lords amendment 22B is a rational and proportionate response to that risk. The Minister has said that the Lords amendment is unnecessary and that donations are covered by other provisions, but I ask him once again, can he truly assure us that dirty money, with a price attached, is not finding its way into our system and our democracy?

Stop and Search

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

Simply put, it is because such searches prevent crime and save lives.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. The use of stop and search has been raised with me during an ongoing feud in my constituency, yet the Police Service of Northern Ireland has used stop and search as an effective tool to combat the transport and sale of illegal drugs, to take lethal weapons off the streets and to find evidence of criminal activity. Will the Home Secretary’s advice to police forces on the mainland be extended to our police in Northern Ireland? They live under a high threat level and need the legal ability for stop and search to be fully understood and endorsed. If not, will she ask her colleague the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to make this messaging crystal clear in Northern Ireland too?

[Suella Braverman]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, I cannot speak for the PSNI. Since the county lines programme was launched in England and Wales in 2019, police activity has resulted in more than 3,500 lines closed, 10,000 arrests and 5,700 safeguarding referrals, all linked to drug offences. That is a success story and we must keep going.

Migration

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

What a pleasure it is to follow the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley). His contribution is always very wise—he is not called the Father of the House for nothing—and we thank him for that. I also thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to sow into this important debate.

I love to be part of a nation that embraces others. The fact that many of our hospitals could not currently function without international staff is testament to the mutually beneficial role that legal migrants play in all areas of the fabric of this wonderful society in which we are so blessed to live.

I will mention four points to begin with and then focus specifically on migration and the fishing sector. First, nearly 40% of those who crossed the channel in 2022 came from just five countries—Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Eritrea and Sudan—that are all in the top 12 of the Open Doors world watchlist, which details the countries that are the worst offenders for the persecution of Christians. That tells me that we open the doors for people who are fleeing due to persecution.

Secondly, yesterday an amendment was tabled in the other place to the Illegal Migration Bill that would make provision for an asylum pathway for individuals persecuted for their religion or belief. I ask the Minister and the Government to support the establishment of such a pathway.

Thirdly, pathway 3 of the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme promised a pathway to 20,000 Afghans from vulnerable backgrounds, including at-risk religious minorities. The Government have promised to resettle more than 5,000 in the first year and up to 20,000 over the next five years. Currently, the pathway is open only to British Council and GardaWorld contractors and Chevening alumni. Again I ask whether that scheme will be opened to the groups identified as being at greatest risk.

Fourthly, I am mindful of something that has already been spoken about—those who have been in the system of hotels for almost two years. I have two companies in my constituency that are willing and able to give jobs to those people right now. If people have been accepted under the asylum system, why not give them the opportunity to work and fill some of the gaps that we have in our area?

I want to focus the rest of my speech on fishing and the visa system. I have been discussing this with Harry Wick from the Northern Ireland Fish Producers Organisation, with whom I have been working closely to find a solution to the question of fishing and migrant workers, and he has asked me to stress something that must underpin this discussion: it is important not to conflate those entering the UK illegally with the safe and legal migrant workers that UK industry depends on.

The media tends to shift attention from those who applied correctly and bring skills to add to our workforce in many different forms to images of illegal immigrants, which is an entirely different debate. As I have said, there are jobs in the UK that need to be filled by highly qualified workers, including in hospitals, and that is accepted. What is not so well understood is that there are roles lying empty that simply are not filled, but which do not require significant training or specific expertise. Those jobs are no less valuable to our society because of that.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) referred to the farming sector. I encourage hon. Members to speak to a farmer who has crops dying in his fields because he cannot get the manual workers to come in. Low-skilled workers are an essential component of the workforce, and we cannot focus only on those with a degree education when other labour is just as essential. I know the Minister appreciates the point I am trying to make.

I am aware that lower-skilled labour is in short supply. The Home Office encourages industry not to look abroad but to look inwards to our own UK citizens, but they do not always fill the gap, whereas higher-skilled roles are filled by migrant workers through the points-based system. Given industry reports that labour supply is the biggest barrier to growth and that the UK labour market cannot fill our existing vacancies in either sphere, we need to understand our position in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in relation to migration in a more specific way.

The very clear question for the Minister is this: does he not agree that it would be in the best interests of UK workers to backfill those lower-skilled vacancies with appropriately sourced and legal migrant workers, while promoting an education system that allows children to pursue a vocational focus that suits their personality, character and what they are able to do, rather than an academic one?

I once read a quote—it might be a bit spurious—that went like this: “If we tell a fish that it is stupid for being unable to climb a tree, we prevent the fish from understanding the depth of its capacity.” It is all about capacity. Those who want to be on the fishing boats have the capacity to understand how fishing works. Instead of berating those who struggle with algebra, we must have a system that allows them to see that perhaps their love of the outdoors is exactly what the local farmer is looking for.

The gap in labour need cannot be filled internally, and the system of outsourcing, particularly in fishing, is too onerous. The language of the sea is understood by all those who work it, and the language barrier on a boat is easily overcome by that common sea speak. Once again, I ask the Home Office to hear my plea. I spoke to the Minister before the debate to reiterate our request from the Westminster Hall debate two weeks ago.

I believe that this might be achieved by developing the existing seasonal workers scheme into something that can better support our fishing and farming communities, upon whom we rely three times a day, every single day, for our sustenance. That could also mean showing flexibility on the language requirement for skilled worker visas. The Minister knows my feelings on that. He has been very amicable in our meetings, and I genuinely appreciate it, as he knows. I am always trying to find solutions. For me, this is about solutions to the system, and I have given the Minister my thoughts about them.

I believe in change, but we need to move forward in a positive fashion to encourage migration for those who want to come here, work here, raise their families here and be a part of the wonderfully diverse British community —this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Before I call the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), I am so pleased to have the opportunity to congratulate her on becoming a dame.

Nottingham Incident

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

My right hon. Friend puts it powerfully. The ripple effects of this tragedy will be felt far and wide, and it will take considerable time for many people to recover and move on with their lives. This is a tragedy of an enormity that the people of Nottingham have not seen, but it is also a tragedy for many other groups and communities around the country.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Home Secretary very much for her statement and her clear compassion for those who grieve today. It is heartbreaking to hear of the tragedy and the cruel, vicious, devastating deaths of two young aspiring students and a man in his 50s. On behalf of the Democratic Unionist party and myself, I send our sympathies and condolences to the family and friends of all the victims and to the good people of Nottingham. Fear stalks the streets of the United Kingdom, so will the Home Secretary ensure that any details relating to the motivation behind the attack will be revealed to the general public, so that future predators and murderers can be identified and swift action can be taken to preserve life?

[Suella Braverman]

Decisions such as that are for the police. Once they establish the facts, if and when they bring charges and if there is an ensuing prosecution, the facts will be aired in the proper course of justice.

Public Order

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Public Order Act 1986 (Serious Disruption to the Life of the Community) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 27 April, be approved.

The regulations propose amendments to sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. These sections provide the police with the powers to impose conditions on harmful protests that cause or risk causing serious disruption to the life of the community. These regulations have been brought forward to provide further clarity. I want to place on record my thanks to the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), and to policing colleagues and officials for their hard work on this issue.

People have a right to get to work on time free from obstruction, a right to enjoy sporting events without interruption and a right to get to hospital. The roads belong to the British people, not to a selfish minority who treat them like their personal property. The impact of these disruptors is huge. Over the past six weeks alone, Just Stop Oil has carried out 156 slow marches around London. That has required more than 13,770 police officer shifts. That is more than 13,000 police shifts that could have been spent stopping robbery, violent crime or antisocial behaviour, and the cost to the taxpayer is an outrage, with £4.5 million spent in just six weeks, on top of the £14 million spent last year. In some cases the protests have aggravated the public so much that they have taken matters into their own hands. They have lost their patience. The police must be able to stop this happening and it is our job in government to give them the powers to do so.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I have noticed over the last few weeks, and others will have noticed this as well, that some of those who are protesting and stopping people getting to work, getting to hospital and going about their normal lives habitually and regularly protest. It seems to me that the law of the land is not hard enough the first time round to ensure they do not do it again. If they continually do it, we need a law to reflect that. Is the Secretary of State able to assure the House that the law will come down hard on protesters who wish to stop normal life?

[Suella Braverman]

The hon. Gentleman is right to emphasise the impact of repetitive, disruptive protesters. That they are behaving disruptively again and again is evidence that we now need to ensure the police have robust and sufficient powers to prevent this from happening.

Asylum-seeking Children: Hotel Accommodation

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for calling me to speak; it is not often that I get called first, so this is a real pleasure.

I commend the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for securing the debate. I spoke to her beforehand. She has a big heart and she brings forward issues that concern us. She referred to a moral obligation. I, too, feel that we have a moral obligation to deliver for those who seek sanctuary and help. I have been very clear and consistent in my approach to the refugee crisis and I will be equally clear today. It is a real pleasure to see the shadow spokespersons and the Minister in their places. I know that the Minister will try to address some of the questions that we will put his way.

As I said, I believe that we have a moral obligation to help those who are displaced in the best way that we can. I believe very much in the foreign aid budget and in giving a fresh start to women and children who have been oppressed and are in danger, or have left danger.

My heart is for the family unit. I am very much a family person; I focus on family. I understand that we cannot take the world in and that we must be selective about who comes to our country. I do not believe that limited capacity should be given to every young, single, fit man who is able to build a life safely in other countries. However, today’s debate is on a matter that is close to my heart—children who are in need of compassion, care and a decent standard of living.

There are not many people in the Chamber who will not be bothered by the subject of this debate when they see the photographs and the stories on TV. Indeed, in our constituencies, we experience the cases and hear the heartbreaking stories that the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith referred to.

Since June 2021, 4,500 unaccompanied migrant children, some as young as 10, have been placed in hotels. I was shocked to learn that some 440 children have gone missing from hotels and that, as of April 2023, 186 of those children still had not been found.

Child trafficking is the most horrible and destructive crime, committed by those who have no morals and no scruples about what they do, and it is not limited to third-world countries; it happens here daily. Data from the UK’s national referral mechanism for the year ending December 2021 showed an increase of 9% in the number of potential child victims being referred compared with the previous year—an increase from 5,028 to 5,468. That is a stark figure, and it should give us some focus.

It grieves me to think of a child coming from the frying pan of a war-torn nation, with the ravages that that brings with it, and seeking safety in our great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland only to become a victim of trafficking. We are under an obligation to prevent that from happening.

I believe that children in hotels must be treated in the same way as looked-after children in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There must be accountability for their wellbeing. With the greatest of respect, I am not sure that children are currently being looked after to an acceptable standard. I seek the Minister’s assurance that that is the case, especially since children in Home Office hotels are not classed as looked-after children, which I suggest means that the appropriate protections and safety measures may not be in place. Prolonged stays in hotels have an impact on whether children will meet the 13-week rule for care leaver support once they move into local authority care.

I am conscious of the wee note that you sent me, Mr Hollobone; I will comply with your request and conclude. I commend the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith for bringing this issue forward. It must be addressed. I think that other Members, in their contributions, will add to our requests and to the concern that we have in our hearts for asylum-seeking children in hotels. I look to the Minister for a clear and concise strategy for these children, to fulfil our obligations as a nation that simply does the right thing. We have a chance to get this right. We must take that opportunity and deliver for the asylum-seeking children in hotels right across this great nation—this nation that reaches out and helps. I know that the Minister wants to help, but it is important that, through this debate, we receive the assurances that we seek and have our requests addressed.