Migration and Economic Development Partnership

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

This Government already have a very considerable number of safe and legal routes. I need only remind the noble Baroness that we have had more than half a million people arriving on safe and legal routes in the past five years. We are one of the most generous countries in the world. The noble Baroness and those who sit on the Benches opposite never adequately explain why it is said that more safe and legal routes would stop people crossing the channel. The point is, as even the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury accepted, that if you impose a cap, the people who want to come here who are not accepted via a safe and legal route will simply take to the boats. It is no answer to say that safe and legal routes will stop the dangerous channel crossings. Our imperative is to save lives.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for taking the time. I cannot imagine that anyone in this House likes the Rwanda scheme from first principles. It is cumbersome, it is expensive. I have listened to a lot of the criticism from various Benches, and a lot of it hit home, but what I have not heard is a credible alternative. We are in this situation because there has been this steady policy of overturning every deportation order from the Bench. We have therefore run out of alternatives. Will the Minister tell me what kind of legal changes might be necessary in order to ensure that we get the policy that was promised and whether those changes will include looking again at some of the international associations and agreements into which we have entered?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. He is absolutely right: we realised that, unfortunately, institutional changes were required. That is why we brought forward the innovative scheme set out in the Illegal Migration Bill. The changes brought forward by that Bill will ensure that a removal system that acts as an effective deterrent to illegal entrants will be fully operational and stop the dangerous channel crossings. My noble friend is entirely right to highlight that, to date, it has been all too easy for removals of those who should not be in our country to be thwarted—not least, I regret to say, by the activities of representations at the last minute relating to foreign national offenders, for example, from Members of the other place sitting on the Opposition Benches.