Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 10th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I am following four consecutive Conservative speakers and, with respect, I have more in common with the first of those four, the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, than with the subsequent three. The noble Baroness rightly quoted the Statement that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, repeated in this Chamber on 8 March. The Minister said then

“let us be honest: by some counts there are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let us be clear: they are coming here”.—[Official Report, 8/3/23; col. 846.]

But this was not honest, and the Minister clarified and corrected the record later in the proceedings.

Globally, at the end of 2022 there were 101 million forcibly displaced people around the world, the majority of whom are internally displaced within their own country —support for whom the UK has slashed its humanitarian assistance to by up to 60%. The global figure for those seeking asylum is 4.9 million; they are still not coming here. But the 1% who are seeking it come here against a narrative which, as my noble friend Lady Kramer so eloquently pointed out, states that they have values that are at odds with ours or that they will cannibalise our society. Now we are being asked to ban claims of asylum because of the method of their arrival rather than the merits of their claim.

The House of Commons Library has showed that the percentage of asylum applicants refused at initial decision reached its high point in 2004, at 88%. Since then, the refusal rate has been falling overall and was just 24% in 2022, its lowest point since 1990. Much of this debate has been about saying that we have an emergency crisis now, but we have the most successful level of justified asylum in 30 years. Some on the opposite Benches say that this is because of judicial activism but, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, said at the commencement of this debate, we actually have tighter restrictions now than ever.

If you are a young Iranian woman threatened with being poisoned in a college, or a young Sudanese woman fleeing threats of rape by the Wagner Group in Sudan, the Government are now banning you from asylum because there are no safe and legal routes from those two countries. The Government need to be clear that there are no safe and legal routes, but their obfuscation comes time and again. I think the Government find it hard to defend the lack of safe and legal routes; that is why they are obfuscating.

The Minister referred at the start of this debate—he declined to take an intervention from me—to the global scheme, as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, who I greatly respect, has. He said that the UK scheme for resettlement of vulnerable refugees is open to anyone from around the world. It is operated through the UNHCR, but what the Government do not say is that the Home Office has asked the UNHCR to have that scheme prioritised for Afghans only, therefore limiting it for others.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact did a review and I will quote from its report in March:

“As a result, the UKRS has almost completely ceased processing vulnerable refugees for resettlement to the UK, in effect closing a rare safe and legal route to seek protection in the UK for refugees who do not fall under a nationality-based scheme”.


Not only are we asked, for the first time in our nation’s history, to end the ability to claim asylum, we are reducing UK support in the very troubled areas people are seeking safety from. The Government do not believe that there are consequences for this, either.

I want to raise something not yet mentioned in the debate. In the 1990s, the UK opposed scoring in-country support for refugees as overseas development assistance, but this is allowed for under ODA rules. Ten years ago, this was a negligible amount. In 2021 it made up 9% of all UK ODA. ICAI estimates that now this is one-third, because the Government—unique among all developed nations—are scoring all domestic support under overseas development assistance. This means that we are now, for the first time, spending more overseas aid in the UK than on bilateral programmes addressing the root causes of the issues that we have been debating today. Because of the unlawful 0.5% cuts, this is now capped.

When the Government and the Minister say that the country is “generous and welcome”, I agree with them; it is that. However, if you seek asylum—a shelter in a storm, as Churchill described it—and if you are a child, you will be denied and you will be locked up before you are sent away and we will not even listen to your case.

On “generous”, let me tell the House that, when it came to the Ukraine scheme, the Government quite rightly trumpeted their thank you payments for families of £350, which has now increased, per family hosting Ukrainian refugees. This is scored 100% on overseas development assistance, which means that the Government do not tell the family that the thank you payment has been cut from children starving in the Horn of Africa, or from those who are fleeing conflict abroad.

I think the Government know that the public are not on their side. That is why they are not giving the full picture. This Bill has no moral basis; we should not be legislating for it, and we are causing more damage around the world, which will make the problem even greater.