Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Wirral and Baroness Ludford

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

It is the principle that I am seeking to deal with. The noble Lord is quite right to ask the question, and perhaps my noble friend the Minister can do some comparisons, but there is no doubt that our colleagues in France feel that one of the key perceived pull factors causing people to get involved in these very dangerous crossings is this subject of no recourse to public funds. That is the only question I am raising. We are being heavily criticised by our French colleagues for allowing ourselves to encourage pull factors to grow and escalate, and that is causing the problem to be much more serious than it was.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My recollection of the French criticism is that they were criticising the ability of asylum seekers to work in the black economy—not the ability to be idle and live off the taxpayer. I imagine that any welfare possibilities in the UK would be less than in France. What they are criticising is the relative unregulated state of our employment market. Some of that criticism is valid; some is not, but we are all sometimes worried by illegal employment. That is what the French were talking about.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

When I look into the detail of the criticism, it is much wider than the noble Baroness is suggesting. Part of it must be NRPF—I am not saying it is the whole problem—and I just wish that we would address—