Illegal Immigration

Debate between Lee Anderson and Matt Vickers

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) for securing this very important debate. As he says, people are arriving here confident in the belief that they will get to stay, and that must change. The cost to the taxpayer is increasingly beyond scrutiny, and we have yet to see the targets set out by Labour.

I echo the comments of colleagues about the concerns associated with illegal immigration, which are undoubtedly incredibly serious and shared by many of those we represent. The hon. Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards) talked about the real and horrendous human cost of this issue, as we have seen in recent weeks, which is one of the many reasons we need to work urgently to get a grip on it. My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) talked about the bizarre creative accounting put forward by the Government in an effort to defend the scrapping of the deportation deterrent, and the fact that moving the cost from one Department to another will not solve the problem.

The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) made valid observations about the nature of the many people arriving and their motivations. The hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) asked why it is that people are fleeing from France. He talked about the important need to stop the pull factor that draws people to get into the small boats. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) told us of his learnings about escorts and the issues created by the ECHR, which have been debated many times in this place and will continue to be debated in the coming weeks, months and years. He talked about the concerns that those issues rightly pose for national security.

With the other business going on in the House today, it seems apt to start by looking at the cost of illegal immigration. Asylum accommodation is costing the taxpayer over £8 million a day and now looks set to keep rising. We have seen this Government grant an asylum amnesty to 100,000 arrivals, without any proper costing in their impact assessment. Government is about priorities. This amnesty is seeing the Government pulling up a chair for people who have entered the country illegally, at the same time as turning off the heating for our pensioners.

Journeys by small boat across the channel are illegal, dangerous and unnecessary. They are unfair on those who are in genuine need, and the country’s finite capacity is taken up by people coming into the UK from a place of safety in France. Furthermore, they are unfair on the British public, due to the huge impact that they have on public services. Thanks to the measures brought forward by the last Government, migrant returns in the year from June 2023 to June 2024 rose by a fifth, enforced returns rose by a half, irregular arrivals fell by 26% and there was a 36% reduction in the asylum backlog. Most importantly, the previous Government changed the law so that when people arrived here illegally, they should not have been able to claim asylum in the UK and so they could be returned to their home country or a safe third country.

We need a deterrent to discourage people from paying the criminal gangs of people smugglers who profit at the peril of others; to prevent people from leaving the safe country that is France, on the assumption of a soft-touch approach here in Britain; and to protect our already overburdened public services and housing supply. This Government’s first act on illegal immigration was to scrap that essential deterrent. It is a deterrent that the National Crime Agency says is essential to tackling the issue, a deterrent whose removal the former chief immigration officer says will create open season for small boats, and a deterrent that is now being looked at by 19 EU countries.

[Lee Anderson]

I thank the shadow Minister for allowing me to intervene. Does he agree that if the previous Conservative Government had had the political backbone and courage to get that first Rwanda flight off and ignore the ECHR, it might have stopped this?

[Matt Vickers]

The hon. Gentleman has walked through the Lobby with me and has been as frustrated as I have in trying to look for a solution to this problem. With the removal of the deterrent, we are basically doing a U-turn on everything that we have put forward and everything that looked as though it could make a difference. We have seen what is happening in Ireland as a result of it. The deterrent would work. If people can arrive in this country and know that they are never going to be sent back, we are going to have a problem.

Just this week, Germany asked the EU if it could use the accommodation that we—British taxpayers—have built in Rwanda, so that it could send asylum seekers there. It is clear that the Conservative Government were making progress on this issue and that Labour is behind the curve. Labour has wasted taxpayers’ money on scrapping this deterrent, and now the EU wants to copy the UK’s scheme. Usually it is the Labour party that wants to copy the EU. The reality is that the new Government have no plan to stop the boats and nowhere to send asylum seekers who cannot be returned home. Where are they going to return the people from countries like Afghanistan, Iran and Syria? If it is not Rwanda, is it Romford? Is it Richmond? Is it Redcar?

Labour got through this election talking tough and saying that it would smash the gangs, but it is quickly realising that it is not a workable policy. Over 8,000 small boat arrivals have landed in the UK since Labour took office, and it still has not even appointed a head of its new border command. More press releases and warm words simply will not cut it now that Labour is in government. In recent months, most people in this room will have knocked on thousands of doors and heard real concerns from residents about what uncontrolled illegal immigration can mean for their community, the pressure on public services and housing, questions around integration, and the tough choices that have to be made about public spending.

When the Minister gets to her feet, will she finally tell hon. Members when the new Labour Government formally told the Rwandan Government that the Rwanda scheme was scrapped? What advice has she received from the National Crime Agency about the need for a deterrent? How many more small boats will cross before the Government appoint a new border command? Will asylum hotels be reopening in the autumn? Where does she plan to send asylum seekers who cannot be returned home?