Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harper on such an accomplished maiden speech. I look forward to future contributions in this debate and other debates in the House.

It seems a lot longer than two years ago that I spoke in the Second Reading debate on the previous Government’s Rwanda Bill. In that contribution, I tried to make a case—perhaps unconvincingly—that in terms of the social contract with the British people on immigration, we, the political establishment, were in the last chance saloon. I tried to make the point that the inflows of illegal migration, and indeed the explosion of legal migration, meant that it was becoming impossible for any UK Government to create, with any significant public support, more routes for the very people who were desperately seeking refuge. I said all this with a heavy heart. I am afraid that the social contract between government and people on immigration has only deteriorated over the past two years.

I am sad to say that it seems difficult to imagine a Government commanding public support for a Syrian, Afghan, Hong Kong or indeed Ukraine resettlement scheme at this point in time. This is not a party-political point; I fully acknowledge that much of the collapse of public confidence in the immigration system came on this side’s watch. I therefore looked forward to a new Government with a fresh mandate carrying on a radical programme to ensure that we as a country could rebuild the trust and confidence required to operate a properly regulated and controlled border—and, importantly for me, to once again give the public confidence to support future resettlement schemes that are currently politically impossible for government to introduce.

There are elements in this Bill that I of course support: the creation of new offences, longer sentences for breaking immigration law and incorporating all sex offenders within Article 33(2) of the refugee convention, on refoulement. I also fully support the international efforts that the Government have made in addressing the root causes of illegal immigration, most especially the small boats. However, I ask the Minister: do the Government really think that the measures contained within the Bill will act as a deterrent for what is a hugely lucrative industry, in the form of people smuggling, when the prospective victims of people smuggling can see waves of new arrivals every week? Do they really think that the measures contained in the Bill help to build public trust in the current state of our border controls?

I was a reluctant supporter of the Rwanda scheme, but I understood that it was bold and radical enough to act as a deterrent and, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Horam, similar schemes had had success in Australia and Denmark. The Government have proudly abandoned the scheme in the Bill, but, at the same time, No. 10 Downing Street continues to brief out attempts to find a partner for offshore processing. The writing is on the wall. The Government will get into a situation where a scheme very like the Rwanda scheme will need to be applied. However, we will first go through two years of angst-ridden incremental steps that achieve very little and further build public exasperation. I understand this because that is exactly what the Conservatives did over the last few years. Only in the last years of the previous Government were we able to take the steps that halved legal migration and achieve parliamentary approval for the Rwanda scheme, which would have acted as a deterrent for illegal migration.

Getting control of our borders is not for me, I assure your Lordships, some nativist, nostalgic look to the past. Failure to act and rebuild public confidence by drastically reducing illegal migration only harms one group in the end—the very refugees who would be granted asylum through resettlement schemes that could command public and therefore political support. With every day that passes without real action, the ability of this country to help the most desperate recedes.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 10th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, as always, it is a great pleasure to be part of a debate in your Lordships’ House, which, no matter which side one stands on the issue, marks the breadth of the expertise and opinion in this Chamber. I respect that expertise as well as the strength of feeling on the Bill from all sides. That strength of feeling exists because this House reflects the public debate taking place outside of Parliament. I will speak in support of the progress of the Bill, not because I take some pleasure in ever-more stringent asylum policy, but—and perhaps to answer the noble Lord, Lord Purvis—because I want to secure safe and legal routes based on humanitarian need; that provides a moral imperative for the Bill to succeed and to be improved.

Public policy must always rely on a contract with, and consent from, the British people; without that consent, the Government are powerless. The Government should be able to articulate the values of this country in welcoming humanitarian refugees in a constant, evolving policy based on humanitarian need. At the moment, this country’s asylum policy is in a state of stasis, or, at best, a reactive state; it is a reactive policy that requires a public response before the Government will act. A totemic tragedy, namely the shock when the body of two year-old Alan Kurdi washed up, galvanised the Government to institute a resettlement policy of 20,000 Syrians. Likewise, the Ukrainian and Hong Kong resettlement schemes, of which we are all proud, have both been implemented fully because of public consent and reaction. Meanwhile, the Afghan scheme for resettlement, which seemed so important to everyone in August 2021, seems to have stalled quite dramatically in its initial aims.

This start/stop policy of bespoke schemes does not represent the values or implementation of a truly humanitarian policy blind to race or geopolitics. Why do we think that our policy has fallen into this stop/start approach to asylum, and away from universal legal routes? The first reason is the failure of our asylum bureaucracy and the lack of resource to process claims. The Prime Minister is prioritising that process with extra staff and support, and that is to be welcomed. Backlogs not only create needless anxiety for those seeking asylum but destroy public confidence in the system.

That public confidence is, I am afraid, why this legislation is required. From 300 asylum seekers arriving in small boats in 2018, we have now reached 45,000. The toxin of this seeming lack of control and unfairness then denigrates all asylum seekers across the world. For those of us who want to ensure safe legal routes based on humanitarian need, it is very difficult to find the public consent necessary to permeate public policy beyond the bespoke schemes I have already discussed. Before 2018, there was an opening after the success of the Syrian resettlement scheme for wider schemes in conjunction with the UNHCR, but that discussion and debate has been paralysed by illegal crossings pushed by the malevolent people traffickers.

I accept that the Government must make every effort to stop the boats if we are to see an expansion of the legal routes on a humanitarian basis, which the vast majority of us in your Lordships’ House want to see. If we do not use all legislative tools at our disposal and rebuild public confidence, I do not believe that any Government, Conservative or Labour, or even a Labour/Lib Dem amalgam, will be able to fully implement a humanitarian legal route process with public consent. I hope my noble friend the Minister will be able to put further flesh on the bones of this legal route process to maximise support in this House.

As well as the survey of accommodation of local authorities to identify their cap, I ask that the Government give further commitments to work with the UNHCR, and that that work forms part of the regular statement that the Home Secretary lays before Parliament. I want a commitment to be given, as we progress the Bill, that routes will be identified to offer asylum to humanitarian asylum seekers, wherever they come from in the world. Transparency in a new process will provide the sunshine and hygiene required to build public confidence and rebuild pride in our humanitarian policy in this country. That is not to say that in the future there will not need to be bespoke policies responding to crises across the world, but they cannot be the basis for our asylum policy.

There are always going to be vulnerable people who will not have the media focus required to launch a bespoke scheme in this country. There must be a credible answer to the question Tim Loughton MP asked the Home Secretary at the Home Affairs Select Committee on routes for those outwith—to use a good Scottish word—the bespoke schemes. The Government will have to provide further assurance to get more support in your Lordships’ House. This Bill is sadly necessary if we are to help the most vulnerable across the world. I will not be able to support the fatal amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, later. Were it to be successful, I fear that the very people who need us to act for them would see safe and legal routes at the scale required becoming an ever more distant prospect.

UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as a member of your Lordships’ Justice and Home Affairs Committee. I thank the most reverend Primate who once again brings before us today a subject that allows us to rise above the topicality of daily politics and properly focus on and think about an important policy area.

Six years ago, I made my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House in another of the most reverend Primate’s debates, that time on British values. In his opening remarks he said:

“In short, we need a more beautiful and better common narrative that shapes and inspires us with a common purpose, a vaulting national ambition, not a sense of division and antagonism both domestically and internationally. We need a narrative that speaks to the world of bright hope and not mere optimism, let alone simple self-interest.”—[Official Report, 2/12/16; col. 418.]


In the area of migration, it seems that we have reached a place wherein lots of competing values and aspirations are clashing and failing to provide the necessary framework that can command consensus and that common purpose that the most reverend Primate so eloquently described in that debate.

Only last week we witnessed outrage in many quarters about the number of migrants who have entered the UK this year, forgetting the enormous public support there was, quite rightly, for the Afghan, Ukrainian and Hong Kong humanitarian resettlement schemes. However, with figures of net migration juxtaposed and conflated with images of small boats, it is the case that, as my noble friend Lady Stowell referred to, a poll earlier this week showed that only 9% of people think current immigration in the UK is just right.

All too often the debate seems characterised in a way that consensus and a settled position may never be reached. I have yet to meet anyone—the most reverend Primate referred to this—who does not think there should be controlled migration. Of course government policy should be considered, and will always be challenged in your Lordships’ House, but if the Government can be expected to control migration and thereafter allow more humanitarian channels, they will have to act to defeat the evil of people smuggling. I am glad to say that it is a priority of the Prime Minister.

In this regard, I tend to agree with the Policy Exchange paper, which noble Lords have referred to, on controlled immigration, published last month. We must be realistic that the extra humanitarian routes many of us want will gain popular and then political consent only when the small boats issue and evil gangs have been confronted.

Consensus on migration issues requires leadership. If there are three principal buckets of migration that the UK wishes to fulfil—humanitarian, economic and educational—each must be properly defined and promoted to the people of this country. In each of these areas, a consensus of support can be built. It has been done before. However, it will require significant improvements in the systems deployed to control immigration, as well as assurance that the UK is proactively seeking to improve its humanitarian and asylum offer. Humanitarian needs will only increase. The UNHCR has identified that 1.5 million more people will require asylum or resettlement in the coming year.

Undoubtedly, something that leads to a lack of public consensus is the very slow processing rate of asylum claims by the Home Office, which a number of noble Lords have referred to. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can reassure your Lordships that there will be the kind of human and creative investment in a Home Office system to ensure that asylum claimants are given as quick a decision as possible. The tiny numbers of asylum decisions at present cause only further distress for those escaping horrific tragedy, but mean that others see the UK as a place where a very slow process will allow leave to remain for a long period.

As well as being efficient, such a system must be humanitarian. I believe that the United Kingdom has a proud history of humanitarian action, but almost always at a point where it is just a little too late, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. We must move away from a situation where legal resettlement schemes are reliant on media reports to gain public traction, in turn to ensure political support for legal resettlement. We have one of the best diplomatic networks in the world. Surely we should have proactive resettlement plans that do not require horrific humanitarian circumstances before we allow a regular legal route to the UK.

Yes, we will disagree on the numbers, but the current schemes do not allow an organic ability to react to humanitarian crises from outside of specific countries. Can my noble friend the Minister outline what work His Majesty’s Government are doing with UNHCR to identify regular resettlement routes from areas of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa? Unless we allow such a mechanism, can we be surprised about the large numbers who end up on the north coast of Africa and then onwards to the channel?

With deep regret, I conclude that we currently do not have the clear consensus and values-based migration strategy that we would want, and which would then shape policy. This is the worst of all worlds. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can reassure us that this new Conservative Administration are determined to provide the leadership that the country needs in managing migration, while offering the humanitarian leadership that we all desire.

Asylum System

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate, absolutely rightly, points to the work that local authorities are doing and we are most grateful to them; 80 local authorities have pledged more than 330 places to support our national transfer scheme. But he is also right to point out that in parallel with requests for more local authorities to support the NTS, we have launched a consultation on a more sustainable long-term model for the NTS.

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con) [V]]

My Lords, given that my noble friend has committed to the importance of resettlement as the best means of avoiding dangerous routes and people trafficking of asylum seekers, will she commit once again to investigate the expansion, post Covid, of person-to-person interviews in refugee camps, especially in Jordan and Lebanon, as opposed to virtual interviews?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

In an ideal world, we would have been doing face-to-face interviews, but for the simpler cases, if you like, virtual interviews have been more efficient. That is not right in every case, but clearly, we should make the most of our digital capabilities where it is appropriate.

Refugees

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for bringing this report before the House. It is a positive sign that my noble friend the Minister of State is replying to the debate. Most of all, I thank the authors of the report, who have opened my eyes and shone a light on what happens to successful asylum seekers in the UK.

In the UK there was quite rightly a public outcry on behalf of refugees after the tragic death of the child refugee Alan Kurdi. These deaths are unfortunately all too common. As happens in Britain, the Government listened, reacted and committed to accepting 20,000 Syrian refugees in the lifetime of the Parliament. That is a very significant number, given the total number of asylum seekers is normally around 40,000 per year.

This report is timely because it has identified a two-tier system that has been caused because of the creation of a best practice—as we have heard from the right reverend Prelate—that a government focus on the resettlement programmes, especially the Syrian vulnerable people resettlement programme, has brought about. This two-tier system has now been recognised in both the APPG report and the report of the Home Affairs Committee in the other place published in January this year. The Government should be congratulated on their continuing commitment to the resettlement programme, working closely with local authorities across the UK. However, this excellent report from the APPG raises the plight of the four-fifths of refugees seeking asylum in the UK who are not part of the resettlement scheme and whose only choice is to seek asylum once they arrive in the UK. One of the great ironies of that is that 10% of all those seeking asylum are Syrians. That underlines the two-tier process that we have that some people of the same nationality can have two very different experiences.

As we have heard, the report correctly identifies the crucial moving-on period—the point at which the clock starts ticking for the successful applicant with 28 days left in Home Office accommodation and before Home Office financial support comes to an end. That is the period in which a successful asylum applicant has to find accommodation, find a job, seek benefits or enter education. It is clear from the APPG report that too much is currently left to chance. The timing of the arrival of the assigned national insurance number, the biometric residence permit and the letter informing the asylum seeker that they have been successful do not appear to be co-ordinated. In the report, there is an example of a successful asylum seeker who received notice to quit his Home Office accommodation but then did not receive notice that he had been successful in his appeal for asylum for a further fortnight. What should be a moment of vindication and hope for the successful asylum applicant becomes one of confusion and, for some, apparent freefall in the system.

I would be grateful to hear from my noble friend the Minister how the Home Office can further co-ordinate this moving-on period with other departments and local authorities to ensure a seamless move from Home Office accommodation. It is difficult to envisage how this could happen without a dedicated resource to support these vulnerable people and ensure that there is cross-departmental access for such a team. The best practice used for the resettlement programmes has surely provided an opportunity for the expertise gained within the Home Office to be deployed.

The Government have trialled successfully the community sponsorship scheme from Canada, and I would hope that they would also look to other international examples of where refugees have been successfully integrated and been able to fulfil their education and make an active economic contribution to their new state. We cannot allow vulnerable refugees to fall through the net and end up homeless in abject poverty, therefore creating significant and, importantly, more expensive responsibilities for the state further down the line.

The Home Office has demonstrated the ability of central government to work closely with local authorities to ensure that vulnerable people are properly cared for in this country. The report we have from the APPG points in several important ways to how we can ensure that those same vulnerable people receive sustained support, co-ordination and management.